KARMA 

BY     LAFCADIO     HEARN 


NEW  YORK 

BONI  AND  LIVERIGHT 

1918 


Copyright,  1918 
BY  BONI  &  LIVERIGHT.  INO. 


First  Printing October,  1918 

Second  Printing December,  1918 


IOAN  STACK 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

KARMA .     .     .  11 

A  GHOST .     „  59 

THE  FIRST  MUEZZIN,  BILAL       ....  70 

CHINA  AND  THE  WESTERN  WORLD  .  110 


300 


EDITOR'S  NOTE 

THE  stories  and  articles  by  Lafcadio 
Hearn  in  this  volume  are  now  collected 
in  book  form  for  the  first  time.  They 
rank  with  his  best  work.  The  opening  story 
"Karma"  is  the  most  personal  product  from 
Hearn's  pen,  as  he  rarely  took  the  public  into 
his  confidence.  No  doubt  the  ideal  love  de 
scribed  in  this  great  tale  was  an  experience  of 
his  own.  The  story  originally  appeared  in 
Lippincott's  Magazine  for  May,  1890. 

"A  Ghost" — a  beautiful  prose-poem — ap 
peared  in  Harper's  Magazine  for  Decem 
ber,  1889. 

"Bilal"  was  a  work  of  great  labor  and  love. 
In  his  letters  to  H.  E.  Krehbiel  he  makes  nu 
merous  references  to  "Bilal."  It  appeared  in 
the  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat  in  1884. 
The  sketch  was  considered  lost  to  the  world. 
I  inquired  from  Mr.  Krehbiel  about  it;  he  dis- 

5 


6  EDITOR'  s  NOTE 

covered  it  in  a  scrap-book  which  he  kindly 
placed  at  my  disposal. 

"China  and  the  Western  World"  appeared 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  April,  1896;  this 
article  shows  a  keen  insight  into  international 
relations  and  is  particularly  timely  to-day. 

I  wish  to  thank  Captain  Mitchell  McDonald 
of  the  United  States  Navy,  Hearn's  friend  and 
literary  executor,  for  permission  to  reprint 
"Karma."  I  also  wish  to  thank  in  behalf  of 
Captain  McDonald,  Harper  Brothers  for  per 
mission  to  include  "A  Ghost"  in  the  present 
volume,  and  the  Atlantic  Monthly  Publishing 
Company  for  permission  to  include  "China  and 
the  Western  World." 

ALBERT  MORDELL. 


KARMA 


WITH  all  her  exceptional  mental 
training,  there  was  an  almost 
childish  ingenuousness  in  her 
every  word  and  act, — a  simplicity  and  direct 
ness  of  manner  that  invited  every  worthy  con 
fidence:  yet  he  had  never  presumed  to  praise 
her.  Behind  that  radiant  girlishness,  natural 
to  her  life  as  azure  to  sky,  he  knew  some  settled 
power, — some  forceful  intelligence  to  which  a 
compliment  would  seem  a  rudeness.  And, 
coerced  to  plainest  frankness  by  his  very  sense 
of  her  personality,  he  found  that  it  needed  no 
little  courage  to  make  his  declaration.  For 
weeks  he  had  attempted  in  vain  to  devise  some 
way  of  softening  the  difficulty  by  prelim 
inaries, — of  giving  some  turn  to  conversation 
that  might  help  him  to  approach  the  matter 

by  gentle  degrees.    But  she  remained  always 

11 


12  KARMA 

so  invulnerable  to  suggestion, — so  strangely 
impregnable  in  her  maidenly  self-posses 
sion!  .  .  .  To  many  lovers  thus  ill  at  ease,  in 
tuition  tells  the  advantage  of  being  alone  with 
the  adored  girl  somewhere  beyond  the  shadow 
of  walls, — in  some  solitude  where  Nature  soft 
ens  hearts  with  her  silence  and  her  loveliness 
and  perpetual  prompting  of  what  is  tender  and 
true, — a  park,  a  wood,  an  umbraged  lane.  But 
to  her,  Nature  and  silence  seemed  to  give 
larger  power  to  awe  him; — the  splendid  light 
itself  seemed  to  ally  with  her  against  him.  He 
lived  near  enough  to  be  often  with  her;  and 
they  walked  much  together  on  quiet  beautiful 
country-roads ;  and  he  never  could  find  courage 
to  do  more  than  admire  her  by  stealth,  while 
conversing  on  subjects  totally  foreign  to  his 
thoughts.  But  each  time  more  and  more  her 
charm  bewildered  him :  the  secret  of  ideal  grace 
seemed  to  live  in  her, — that  something  in  every 
motion  and  poise  which  is  like  melody  made 
visible, — which  makes  you  think  you  hear 
music  when  you  see  it. 

With  the  passing  of  time  his  embarrassment 


KARMA  13 

only  grew.  Sometimes  he  would  even  find  it 
impossible  to  maintain  a  sensible  conversa 
tion, — conscious  of  nothing  but  his  idolatry; 
answering  questions  vaguely,  or  not  at  all.  . .  . 
And  at  such  a  moment  of  his  confusion,  one 
day, — as  they  were  returning  from  a  walk  to 
her  home, — she  turned  near  the  little  gate,  and, 
looking  into  his  face  with  her  archest  smile, 
exclaimed : — 

—"Well,  what  is  it?  Tell  me  all  about 
it.  .  .  ." 

II 

Who  does  not  know  that  luminous  hour  of 
Love's  illusion,  when  the  woman  beloved  seems 
not  a  woman, — never  of  earth,  never  shaped  of 
the  same  gross  substance  forming  man, — but 
a  creature  apart,  unique,  born  of  some  finer, 
subtler,  pearlier  life?  In  her  the  lover  no 
longer  beholds  the  real :  she  has  become  to  him 
so  wonderful  that  he  cannot  guard  his  secret, — 
that  he  must  speak  of  her  so  as  to  betray  him 
self, — that  he  feels  anger  when  questioned 
friends  declare  their  inability  to  see  those  mar- 


KARMA 


vels  which  he  discerns  in  her.  And  then,  with 
this  exquisite  delirium  of  the  senses,  mysterious 
above  aught  else  in  the  all-circling  mystery  of 
life; — with  this  wondrous  bewitchment,  sung 
of  since  song  found  voice,  yet  ever  uninter- 
pretable  save  as  the  working  magic  of  that 
Will  wherefrom,  as  ether-dartings  from  a  sun- 
burning,  are  souls  thrilled  out; — with  the 
astonishment  of  woman's  charm  thus  made 
divine, — the  miracle  of  her  grace  and  purity  of 
being, — there  comes  to  the  lover  a  cruel  sense 
of  his  own  unworthiness.  .  .  .  What  are  you, 
O  man !  poisoned  with  passions  and  knowledge 
of  evil,  that  you  should  think  to  mingle  the 
lucid  stream  of  her  life  with  the  turbid  current 
of  your  own?  Were  it  less  than  sacrilege  to 
dream  of  it?  All  limpid  and  fleckless  the  azure 
of  her  thought:  would  you  make  it  gray? — 
darken  it? — call  into  it  the  cloudings  that 
scathe  with  fire?  .  .  .  What  are  you,  that  she 
should  make  you  her  chosen  of  all  men, — ac 
cept  her  fate  from  you?  .  .  .  What  are  you, 
that  she  should  ever  caress  you, — suffer  you  to 
touch  her,  to  learn  her  thought,  to  seek  the  in- 


KARMA  15 


finite  in  her  eyes,  to  know  the  sweet  warm  soft 
shock  of  her  kiss? 

Yet  the  illusion  of  her  in  those  hours  of  deli 
cious  madness  when  all  the  veins  burn  with 
thirst  of  sacrifice  for  her  sake ; — the  illusion  of 
her  during  all  the  tense,  fiery,  magnetic  draw 
ing  of  your  life  to  hers  with  insensate  longing 
to  absorb  it  utterly  and  be  therein  impossibly 
absorbed, — to  blend  with  it,  to  die  for  it:  that 
illusion,  however  seeming-celestial,  is  less  beau 
tiful,  infinitely  less  admirable,  than  the  com 
plex  reality  of  her  worth, — if  she  be  indeed  of 
the  finer,  rarer  type  of  womanhood, — if  she  be 
indeed  one  of  those  marvelously-specialized 
human  flowers  that  bloom  only  in  the  higher 
zones  of  aspirational  being, — even  at  the  verge 
of  God's  snow-line.  .  .  .  Have  you  ever 
thought  what  she  truly  is, — this  perfumed 
chalice-blossom  stored  with  all  sweetness  of 
humanity? — have  you  ever  dreamed  what  she 
is  worth? 

.  .  .  For  all  the  myriads  of  the  ages  have 
wrought  to  the  making  of  her.  -ZEons  of  strug- 


16  KARMA 

gle  and  blood  and  tears  are  the  price  of  her. 
And  in  that  she  is  good, — because  of  the  soul- 
sweetness  of  her, — is  she  not  the  utmost  yet- 
possible  expression  of  divinity  working 
through  man?  .  .  .  Think  you  what  her  sweet 
ness  means, — the  free  beauty  of  her  mind, — 
the  tenderness  of  her, — the  sensitive  exquisite- 
ness  of  her  being!  It  signifies  so  much  more 
than  she  .  .  .  !  It  means  the  whole  history  of 
love  striving  against  hate,  aspiration  against 
pain,  truth  against  ignorance,  sympathy 
against  pitilessness.  She, — the  soul  of  her! — 
is  the  ripened  passion-flower  of  the  triumph. 
All  the  heroisms,  the  martyrdoms,  the  immola 
tions  of  self, — all  strong  soarings  of  will 
through  fire  and  blood  to  God  since  humanity 
began, — conspired  to  kindle  the  flame  of  her 
higher  life. 

And  yet,  perhaps,  she  is  willing  to  be  yours ! 

Viewlessly  your  being  has  become  slowly 
interorbed  with  hers; — each  life  is  secretly 
seeking  union  with  the  other  through  inter 
weaving  of  wishes  unconfessed.  Within  her 


KARMA  17 


charming  head  are  thoughts  and  dreams  and 
beliefs  about  you.  Something  shadowy, — an 
emanation  of  you,  an  illusion, — has  entered 
into  that  limpid  life,  and  tinted  all  its  thinking, 
as  clearest  water  is  tinted  by  one  touch  of  eosin, 
and  flushes  through  with  rose-color  of  dawn. 
Her  blood  has  learned  of  you  in  the  blind  sweet 
pink  chambers  of  her  life, — quickens  its  throb 
bing  at  the  echo  of  your  step,  at  the  sound  of 
your  voice  .  .  .  even  at  the  remembrance  of 
your  face.  In  sleep  she  speaks  to  you, — to 
your  Eidolon, — to  the  shadow  of  you  apotheo 
sized  by  the  wondrous  mirroring  of  her  girl's- 
love.  Her  wishes  are  of  you;  her  plans  are 
shapen  for  you :  some  thought  you  uttered  has 
been  utilized  in  that  secret  splendid  architec 
ture  of  faith  being  builded  within  her  dainty 
brain.  Was  it  real  enough,  strong  enough, 
flawless  enough  to  serve  for  so  holy  a  use? — 
or  was  it  sleazy  and  false, — ready  to  yield  at 
the  first  unlooked-for  pressure,  and  bring  down 
with  its  breaking  all  the  charming  gracious 
fabric  innocently  confided  to  its  support? 
— "Have  I  the  generous  skill  to  make  her 


18  KARMA 


happy?  .  .  .  Have  I  the  methods  of  wealth  to 
keep  want  far  from  her?  .  .  .  Have  I  the 
force  to  wrestle  with  the  world  for  her, — and 
win?  .  .  .  Am  I  strong  enough  to  protect  her 
from  all  harm?  .  .  .  Shall  I  be  able  to  provide 
for  her  and  for  her  children  in  all  things,  should 
death  come  suddenly  to  take  me  away?"  .  .  . 
Are  these  all  the  honest  questions  that  you  ask 
yourself?  And  having  asked,  and  found  the 
power  to  cry  out  Yes  to  every  asking,  do  you 
think  you  have  asked  enough?  .  .  .  Nay!  such 
questions  are  babble  to  other  questions  which 
selfishness  or  ignorance  may  have  prevented 
you  from  asking,  but  which  it  remains  your 
duty  to  demand:  your  duty  to  her, — your  duty 
to  the  future, — your  duty  to  mankind, — your 
duty  to  the  Supreme  Father  of  all  life  and 
love. 

.  .  .  For  what  purpose  was  she  formed? 
.  .  .  Surely  to  be  loved.  .  .  .  But  for  what 
purpose  loved?  Ah!  never  for  yours  alone! 

Only  for  the  divine  purpose  came  she  into 
being, — this  Love-Kindler, — foam-born  out  of 


KARMA  19 


life's  sea-bitterness  under  the  lashing  of  all  the 
Winds  of  pain.  And  through  her,  as  through 
each  so-far-perfected  form,  the  eternal  Will  is 
striving  to  bring  souls  out  of  Night  into  the 
splendor  of  that  time  when  the  veil  between 
divine  and  human  shall  have  been  taken  away. 

In  her  beauty  is  the  resurrection  of  the  fair 
est  past; — in  her  youth,  the  perfection  of  the 
present; — in  her  girl-dreams,  the  promise  of 
the  To-Be.  .  .  .  Million  lives  have  been  con 
sumed  that  hers  should  be  made  admirable; 
countless  minds  have  planned  and  toiled  and 
agonized  that  thought  might  reach  a  higher 
and  purer  power  in  her  delicate  brain; — count 
less  hearts  have  been  burned  out  by  suffering 
that  hers  might  pulse  for  joy; — innumerable 
eyes  have  lost  their  light  that  hers  might  be 
filled  with  witchery; — innumerable  lips  have 
prayed  for  life  that  hers  might  be  kissed.  .  .  . 

And  can  you  dare  to  love  her  without  ghostly 
fear? — without  one  thought  of  all  the  hopes, 
strivings,  sacrifices,  sufferings  which  created 
her? — without  terror  of  your  weird  responsi 
bility  to  the  past  and  its  dead  pains, — to  all 


20  KARMA 


those  vanished  who  labored  that  she  might  see 
the  light?  Numberless  they  may  have  been; 
yet  how  unspeakably  vaster  the  multitude  of 
possibilities  involved  by  her  single  slender  ex 
istence!  Not  to  the  sacrificial  past  alone  are 
you  responsible,  but  to  the  mysterious  To- 
Come  also  and  much  more, — and  to  that  Un 
knowable  likewise,  working  within  and  beyond 
all  time, — that  Will  which  is  Goodness.  .  .  ." 
Through  her  young  heart  throbs  rosily  the 
whole  God-Future:  its  love,  its  faith,  its  hope 
are  seeking  there  to  quicken, — all  flower-wise 
folded  up  in  the  bud  of  her  exquisite  life.  .  .  . 

in 

.  .  .  She  did  not  appear  surprised  when  he 
uttered  his  wish:  she  only  became  a  little  seri 
ous, — and  met  his  gaze  without  one  sign  of  shy 
ness,  as  she  made  answer: — 

—"I  do  not  yet  know.  ...  I  am  not  sure 
you  love  me." 

— "Oh,  could  you  but  try  me! — what  would 
I  not  do!  .  .  ." 

Placid  as  sculpture  her  face  remained,  while 


KARMA  21 


her  fine  silky-shadowed  eyes  observed,  as  with 
a  curious  doubting  sympathy, — the  passionate 
eagerness  of  his  look. 

— "But  I  do  not  approve  of  those  words," 
she  said.  "If  I  thought  you  meant  all  that  is 
in  them,  I  might  not  like  you." 

— "Why?"  he  queried,  in  surprise. 

— "Because  there  are  so  many  things  one 
should  not  do  for  anybody.  .  .  .  Would  you 
do  what  you  suspected  or  knew  to  be  wrong  for 
the  purpose  of  pleasing  me?" 

He  was  afraid  to  answer  at  once; — but  she 
read  his  thought  in  the  quick  hot  blush  that  fol 
lowed  it, — and  the  blush  pleased  her  more  than 
his  words. 

— "I  do  not  really  know,"  she  resumed,  after 
a  moment's  silence, — moving,  as  she  spoke,  to 
pluck  a  flower  from  the  neighboring  hedge, — 
"I  do  not  know  yet  whether  I  ought  to  allow 
myself  to  like  you." 

.  .  .  Her  expression  of  doubt  made  him 
happy, — suddenly,  wildly  happy.  His  heart 
filled  full  almost  to  breaking  with  the  delight 
of  her  words :  yet  he  could  imagine  nothing  to 


22  KARMA 


say  or  do.  He  feared  this  strange  girl, — 
feared  her  as  much  as  he  loved  her.  .  .  .  For 
fully  a  minute  she  played  with  the  flower  in 
silence, — and  that  minute  seemed  to  him  very 
long.  The  flower  photographed  itself  upon  his 
brain  with  a  vividness  that  remained  undimin- 
ished  to  the  day  of  his  death.  It  was  a  purple 
aster.  .  .  . 

— "Let  me  tell  you," — she  continued  at  last, 
looking  straight  into  his  eyes  with  her  clear 
keen  sky-gray  frankness, — "let  me  tell  you 
what  to  do.  .  .  .  Go  home  now :  then, — as  soon 
as  you  feel  able  to  do  it  properly, — write  out 
for  me  a  short  history  of  your  life; — just  write 
down  everything  you  feel  you  would  not  like 
me  to  know.  Write  it, — and  send  it.  .  .  ." 

— "And  then?"  he  asked,  as  she  paused  a 
little. 

— "And  then  I  shall  tell  you  whether  I  will 
marry  you," — she  finished,  resolutely.  .  .  . 
"Now,  good-by!" 

—"But,"  he  persisted,  clinging  almost  des 
perately  to  the  slender  hand  extended, — "you 
will  believe  me  .  ,  ?" 


KARMA  23 

—"How  believe  you?  .  .  .  If  I  did  not  think 
I  could  believe  you,"  she  answered,  surprised 
into  sternness,  and  at  once  withdrawing  her 
hand, — "I  should  already  have  told  you  very 
plainly,  No!" 

— "Only  that  I  love  you,"  he  explained. 

She  only  smiled,  and  repeated, — 

-"Good-by!" 

IV 

.  .  .  "Write  out  for  me  a  short  history  of 
your  life;  .  .  .  write  down  everything  you  feel 
you  would  not  like  me  to  know.  .  .  " 

So  easy  a  task  it  seemed  that  he  hurried 
homeward  filled  with  the  impulse  to  do  it  at 
once, — wondering  at  the  length  of  the  way  in 
his  impatience  to  begin.  .  .  .  " Then  I  shall  tell 
you  whether  I  will  marry  you.  .  .  "  Some 
thing  joyous  filled  his  whole  being  with  light 
ness  and  force, — the  elixir  of  hope!  He 
thought  of  the  duty  imposed  on  him  as  almost 
pleasurable, — without  knowing  why.  .  .  .  Per 
haps  because  in  reviewing  our  own  faults  we 
are  wont  to  compassionate  ourselves  as  victims 


24  KARMA 


of  circumstances,  and  to  betray  our  weaknesses 
to  a  friend  is  therefore  to  invite  the  consola 
tion  of  sympathy  with  our  own  self-pity.  .  .  . 

But  this  eagerness  was  of  the  moment  only, 
— the  moment  of  nervous  reaction  succeeding 
suspense,  before  he  had  yet  time  to  think.  In 
a  little  while  it  passed  away  under  the  influ 
ence  of  a  growing  conviction  that  the  under 
taking  was  serious  enough  to  decide  his  whole 
life.  A  single  phrase  might  lose  him  incom 
parably  more  than  he  had  gained, — might  even 
condemn  him  irrevocably.  And  the  indulgent 
manner  of  her  own  words  recurred  to  him  as 
a  gentle  caution  against  impulsiveness: — "As 
soon  as  you  feel  able  to  do  it  property" 

And  ere  reaching  home  he  had  ceased  to  feel 
at  all  confident.  Unexpectedly, — one  after 
another, — there  had  recurred  to  him  certain  in 
cidents  of  his  career  as  a  young  man  which 
could  not  be  written  down  with  ease.  The  sim 
ple  recollection  of  them  came  with  a  little  sharp 
shock :  a  young  man's  follies,  of  course,  but  fol 
lies  that  could  not  be  recorded  without  ex 
treme  care  of  expression.  .  .  . 


KARMA  25 


.  .  .  "Everything  you  feel  you  would  not 
like  me  to  know.  .  .  "  Surely  she  could  not 
have  understood  the  full  possible  significance 
of  her  command!  Neither  could  she  suppose, 
unless  most  strangely  innocent,  that  men  were 
good  like  women!  .  .  .  But  what  if  she  could 
and  did  suppose  it?  In  that  event,  the  faint 
est  reference  to  certain  passages  of  his  life 
must  cause  her  cruel  surprise.  .  .  .  "Every 
thing  you  feel  you  would  not  like  me  to 
know.  .  .  "  All  or  nothing! 

And  he  found  himself  almost  startled  by  this 
first  definite  comprehension  of  the  duty  to  be 
performed, — the  problems  to  be  solved, — the 
delicate  subtile  severity  of  that  moral  test  he 
had  so  lightly  welcomed  as  a  relief  from  love's 
incertitude. 


To  make  a  rough  draft  of  all  that  ought  to 
be  written,  and  then  amend,  refine,  compress, 
correct,  and  recopy, — had  first  appeared  to  him 
the  readiest  way  of  obeying  her  wishes.  But 


26  KARMA 


subsequent  reflection  led  him  to  believe  that 
such  a  method  involved  temptation  to  vanity 
of  style,  conceit  of  phrase, — general  insincerity 
of  expression.  With  his  freshly-acquired  right 
to  the  hope  of  winning  her,  there  began  to  stir 
and  expand  within  him  a  sense  of  gratitude  un 
speakable  to  the  giver,  and  a  new  courage  of 
trustfulness  likewise,  which  momentarily  con 
quered  his  doubts.  No :  it  would  be  more  loyal 
to  write  down  each  fact  as  it  came  to  memory, 
— simply,  bravely,  candidly, — and  send  her  the 
original  record  in  its  plain  spontaneous  sin 
cerity.  .  .  .  For  a  little  while  he  felt  himself 
exalted  with  zeal  of  frankness, — with  high  re 
solve  to  master  his  sensitiveness, — to  overrule 
any  secret  wish  to  appear  better  than  he  was. 
...  But  after  having  remained  more  than 
an  hour  at  his  desk,  he  found  this  second  cour 
age  of  purpose  also  fail  him.  The  record  of 
his  childhood  and  early  youth, — even  the  de 
tailed  narrative  of  his  first  struggle  in  the 
world  of  adult  effort,  with  a  heart  still  fresh, 
timid,  loving, — bewildered  by  the  great  stir 
ring  about  and  beyond  it,  like  some  cage-born 


KARMA  27 


creature  loosed  in  a  wood, — all  this  had  not 
been  difficult  to  write.  There  was  nothing  in 
it  that  he  could  not  feel  willing  she  should 
know.  But  thereafter  the  course  of  his  duty 
seemed  fraught  with  peril;  and  all  his  former 
doubts  and  fears  came  thronging  back  to  haunt 
him.  It  was  not  going  to  prove  so  easy  to  make 
as  he  had  for  one  foolish  moment  presumed  to 
believe, — this  confession  of  sins!  .  .  . 

And  the  dismay  of  difficulties  unforeseen, — 
the  fear  of  making  known  to  her,  even  by  inti 
mation,  matters  which  he  had  so  often  re 
counted  to  friends  without  a  thought  of  shame, 
— began  to  excite  within  him  an  unfamiliar 
indefinable  feeling  of  moral  bewilderment. 
How  strangely,  how  violently  such  incidents 
shifted  their  color  when  brought,  even  by 
fancy,  into  the  atmosphere  of  luminous,  pas 
sionless  purity  which  enveloped  her!  Could 
it  be  possible  that  he  had  never  before  looked 
at  them  save  in  artificial  light, — under  the  de 
lusive  glare  of  some  factitious  morality? 

.  .  .  "Everything  you  feel  you  would  not 
like  me  to  know.  .  .  "  Yet  why  falter? 


28  KARMA 


Surely  the  sweet  command  itself  implied  the 
promise  of  all  possible  pardon!  .  .  .  And, 
after  all,  the  only  feasible  way  of  obeying  it 
would  be  that  which  he  had  thought  of  at  the 
outset, — to  set  everything  down  bluntly,  and 
then  reshape  the  whole, — ameliorate  the  form. 

.  .  .  But  even  thus  the  task  exacted  more 
painful  thinking  than  he  had  been  able  to  fore 
see.  So  many  impressions  had  become  blurred 
or  effaced  in  his  remembrance! — there  were 
links  missing  between  incidents; — there  were 
memories  of  acts  without  recollection  of  prece 
dents  and  impulses, — without  record  of  those 
circumstances  which  alone  could  mitigate  their 
aspect  of  perversity.  .  .  .  Yes,  it  was  true 
that  he  did  not  wish  to  appear  any  better  than 
he  was ; — but,  in  her  eyes,  at  least,  he  dare  not 
suffer  himself  to  seem  worse.  .  .  .  Slowly  and 
carefully — in  the  pauses  of  his  nervous  pacing 
up  and  down  the  room  for  hours, — he  elabo 
rated  another  page  ...  a  page  and  a  half, 
of  letter-paper.  Then  he  read  over  all  that  he 
had  written. 

His  face  burned  at  the  mere  thought  of  those 


KARMA  29 


lines  being  seen  by  her.  "Never!"  he  cried  out 
aloud  to  himself, — "never  could  I  send  her 
that!"  ...  It  would  have  to  be  modified — to 
tally  modified  in  some  way.  Yet  to  change  it 
enough, — without  insincerity, — without  posi 
tive  untruthfulness, — seemed  almost  impossi 
ble.  And  this  was  what  he  had  thought  him 
self  able  to  do  immediately!  .  .  .  Could  she 
have  divined  that  it  would  not  be  easy  to  do, 
when  she  had  said, — so  slowly  and  distinctly 
in  that  soft  penetrating  voice  of  hers, — "As 
soon  as  you  feel  able3'?  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Darkness  found  him  still  at  his  desk; 
and  the  task  did  not  seem  to  him  even  fairly 
begun:  all  its  difficulties  appeared  to  multiply 
and  to  make  more  and  more  confusion  in  his 
mind  the  longer  he  thought  about  them.  He 
lighted  his  lamp,  and  worked  on,  hour  after 
hour, — struggling  with  the  stony  hardness  of 
statements  which  no  skill  of  honest  verbal 
chemistry  could  soften, — trying  to  remodel 
sentences  already  rewritten  a  score  of  times. 
,  .  .  It  was  long  past  midnight  when  he  rose 


30  KARMA 

from  his  desk  overweary,  and  resigned  his  writ 
ing  to  seek  repose, — utterly  astounded  at  the 
result  of  this  strange  obligation  to  testify 
against  himself  in  the  secret  high  court  of 
honor, — to  estimate  the  moral  value  of  his  life 
by  the  simple  measure  of  one  sweet  girl's  idea 
of  goodness.  .  .  . 

VI 

He  laid  himself  down  to  rest;  but  the  cool 
peace  of  sleep  would  not  come:  his  thought, 
heated  to  pain  by  all  the  emotions  of  the  day, 
still  burned  on, — flaming  and  smouldering  by 
turns.  Sometimes  he  saw  her  eyes,  her  smile 
— fancied  he  could  hear  her  voice; — then  his 
unfinished  manuscript  seemed  always  to  rise 
up  magnified  between  them, — like  a  great 
white  written  curtain  wavering  soundlessly, 
with  ominous  distortions  of  meaning  in  every 
undulation.  Then  he  would  try  to  review  all 
that  he  had  penned,  only  to  remember  involun 
tary  errors  or  to  detect  insincerities  compelled 
by  the  vain  effort  to  make  some  compromise 
between  absolute  frankness  and  positive  de- 


KARMA  31 


ceit, — until  his  thought  would  drift  back,  un 
directed  by  any  purpose,  into  the  past.  But 
always,  sooner  or  later,  he  would  find  himself 
sharply  recalled  as  by  a  sudden  fear  to  the 
remembrance  of  the  present, — of  her, — of  her 
last  words, — and  the  white  nightmare  of  his 
unfinished  confession. 

.  .  .  Repeatedly  he  strove  to  quell  this  men 
tal  agitation,  to  win  back  internal  calm  by  rea 
soning  with  that  once  more  self -asserting  con 
science,  now  recognizably  aggressive,  which 
had  been  so  long  dumb  that  he  believed  it  ap 
peased  when  it  was  only  sullen, — reduced  to 
silence  by  some  false  and  subtile  casuistry,  but 
never  conciliated.  He  sought  to  find  excuses, 
apologies,  explanations  for  his  faults, — mar 
shaling  in  memory  all  mitigating  circum 
stances  of  each  yielding  to  guilty  impulse, — 
endeavoring  to  convince  himself  of  the  insig 
nificance  of  an  act  by  optimistic  judgment  of 
its  consequences.  Inexperience  was  so  blind; 
— youth  could  delude  so  cruelly !  .  .  .  And  yet 
were  not  many  men, — men  like  him, — made 
wiser  and  better  by  their  early  follies,  stronger 


32  KARMA 

by  their  weaknesses? — souls  tempered  into  self- 
mastery  through  error  and  regret,  as  steel 
through  fire  and  water?  .  .  .  Was  he  not  of 
these?  Might  she  not  so  absolve  him, — suffer 
him  to  love  her?  Dare  he  not  hope  that  she 
would  pardon  him  all  that  he  could  fully  for 
give  himself? — and  surely  there  was  nothing 
he  could  not  forgive  himself  .  .  .  except — 

— Except  .  .  .  /  Ah!  there  he  had  been 
more  than  weak,  more  than  foolish,  worse  than 
selfish !  .  .  .In  that  instance  at  least,  conscience 
had  confuted  all  argument, — scorned  all  con 
solation.  It  was  not  an  error :  it  was  crime, — 
unmistakable  wickedness.  No  studied  elimina 
tion  of  details  could  make  it  otherwise  appear 
in  that  which  he  had  to  write.  He  had  known 
that  fault  so  well  for  what  it  was  that  he  had 
trained  his  mind  never  to  dwell  upon  it, — dis 
ciplined  his  recollection  to  avoid  it.  ...  And 
with  the  burning  memory  of  it,  there  suddenly 
revived  other  kindred  remembrances  of  shame 
and  pain:  things  before  forgotten,  because  of 
his  long  effort  to  efface  from  the  mental  chart 
of  his  life,  a  whole  zone  of  years.  But  now, 


KARMA  33 

every  marking  thus  obliterated, — all  the  reefs 
and  shoals  and  drifting  wrecks  of  old  storm- 
spaces, — had  risen  into  visibility  again.  .  .  . 
Never,  never  could  he  tell  her  of  these !  .  .  . 

Then  he  must  lose  her, — lose  her  irrevocably! 
And  losing  her,  what  could  life  be  worth  to 
him?  To  lose  her  would  be  to  lose  himself, — 
his  higher  self, — all  the  nobility  of  that  new 
being  into  which  his  love  for  her  had  lifted  him 
up.  True  it  was  that  she  had  ever  seemed 
placed  by  her  loftier  nature  beyond  his  reach ; 
— that  he  had  entered  into  the  pure  repose 
about  her,  feeling  as  an  intruder, — as  one  hav 
ing  wandered  unbidden  with  raiment  blood- 
besprinkled  into  some  seraphic  peace,  and 
trembling  for  the  moment  of  banishment,  yet 
with  unhallowed  feet  held  fast  by  strangest 
spell  of  bliss.  .  .  .  And  nevertheless  was  she 
not  all  in  all  his  complement, — light  to  his 
shadowing,  snow  to  his  fire,  strength  to  his 
weakness? — a  nature  evolved  with  marvelous 
appositeness  for  union  with  his  own?  Not  that 
he  could  presume  to  deem  himself  thus  worthy, 


34  KARMA 


but  that  she  might  render  him  so  much  more 
worthy  by  loving  him!  .  .  .  To  lose  her?  .  .  . 
All  that  his  aspiration  had  ever  imaged  of  ideal 
human  goodness,  all  that  his  heart  had  ever 
hungered  for,  responded  to  her  own  dear  name! 
— nay!  before  her  he  found  himself  dazzled  as 
by  divinity,  so  transcendently  were  all  his 
dreams  surpassed.  .  .  .  To  lose  her?  He 
alone,  out  of  the  thousands  destined  to  seek  in 
vain, — the  myriads  deluded  by  hope  of  win 
ning  the  Woman  never  to  be  known, — he  only 
had  been  fated  to  find  his  ideal.  Had  he  then 
found  her  only  to  lose  her  forever? 

— "Everything  you  feel  you  would  not  like 
me  to  know"  .  .  .  Did  she — could  she — sus 
pect  there  were  incidents  of  his  life  which  he 
dared  not  write?  Had  she  simply  decided  to 
checkmate  his  wooing  by  forcing  him  to  accept 
a  sort  of  moral  chess-game  of  which  she  had 
foreseen  every  possible  move  from  the  begin 
ning?  .  .  .  The  pitiable  suspicion  perished  in 
a  moment;  but  there  sprang  up  at  once  in  the 
place  of  it  his  first  impulse  to  positive  insincer- 


KARMA  35 


ity.  Could  he  not  deceive  her? — might  he  not 
dissemble  ?  Over  and  over  again  he  asked  him 
self  the  question, — justifying  and  condemn 
ing  his  weakness  by  turns ;  and  each  time  her 
words  flashed  back  to  him: — "Would  you  do 
what  you  thought  or  felt  to  be  wrong  to  please 
me?"  .  .  .  "Yes,  I  would!"  he  once  passion 
ately  cried  out  in  answer;  and  then  felt  him 
self  blush  again  in  the  dark  for  the  cowardice 
of  the  acknowledgment.  ...  But  even  though 
he  would,  he  knew  that  he  could  not.  Even 
were  he  to  write  a  lie,  he  could  not  meet  her 
and  maintain  it,  with  her  eyes  upon  his  face: 
they  had  uttermost  power  over  him — power  as 
of  life  and  death, — those  fine  gray  sweet  mes 
meric  eyes! 

.  .  .  Then  what  was  he  to  do?  Confess  him 
self  a  criminal  by  praying  her  to  forego  the 
test  after  having  begged  her  to  prove  him? .  .  . 
Ask  her — ask  Truth's  own  Soul! — to  take  him 
to  herself  with  that  black  falsehood  in  his  life? 
.  .  .  Write  her  all, — and  die?  .  .  .  Write 
nothing,  and  disappear  forever  from  the  world 
to  which  she  belonged?  .  .  . 


36  KARMA 


VII 

Yet  why  this  intensifying  dread, — like  the 
presage  of  a  great  pain?  .  .  .  Why  had  he  al 
ways  feared  that  slight  girl  even  while  loving 
her? — feared  her  unreasoningly,  like  a  super 
natural  being, — measuring  his  every  thought  in 
the  strange  restraint  of  her  presence?  .  .  . 
How  imperfect  his  love,  if  perfect  love  casteth 
out  fear!  Imperfect  by  so  much  as  his  own 
nature  was  imperfect;  but  he  had  loved  less 
perfectly  with  never  a  thought  of  fear.  .  .  . 
By  what  occult  power  could  she  make  him  thus 
afraid?  Perhaps  it  was  less  her  simple  beauty, 
her  totally  artless  grace,  which  made  her  un 
like  all  other  women,  than  the  quiet  settled  con 
sciousness  of  this  secret  force.  Assuredly 
those  fine  gray  eyes  were  never  lowered  before 
living  gaze:  she  seemed  as  one  who  might  look 
God  in  the  face.  .  .  .  Men  would  qualify  such 
sense  of  power  as  hers,  "strength  of  character" ; 
— but  the  vague  term  signified  nothing  beyond 
the  recognition  of  the  power  as  a  fact.  Was 


KARMA  37 


the   fact   itself   uninterpretable? — a   mystery 
like  the  mystery  of  life? 

VIII 

.  .  .  But  imperceptibly,  all  self -questioning 
weakened  and  ceased.  Weariness  began  to 
flood  his  thought, — like  some  gray  silent  ris 
ing  tide,  spreading  and  drowning.  Ideas 
slowly  floated  up,  half-formed, — soft  and 
cold.  .  .  .  Then  darkness, — and  a  light  in  the 
darkness  that  illumined  her, — and  the  sense  of 
some  strange  interior  unknown  to  him. 

He  saw  her  in  that  filmy  light,  imponderably 
poised,  with  ghostliest  grace  made  visible 
through  some  white  vapor  of  veils ; — the  gloss 
iness  of  her  arms  uplifted  for  the  braiding 
of  her  hair,  seeming  the  radiance  of  some  sub 
stance  impossible, — like  luminous  ivory.  And 
this  soft  light  that  orbed  and  bathed  her,  held 
some  odorous  charm, — thin  souls  of  flowers, — 
faint,  faint  perfume  of  dream-blossoms.  And 
he  knew  that  she  was  robing  for  her  wedding 
with  him. 

He  stood  beside  her:  the  soft  spheral  light 


38  KARMA 

touched  him/  .  .  .  All  around  them  was  a 
great  pleasant  whispering, — the  whispering  of 
many  friends  assembled.  He  looked  into  the 
penumbra  beyond  her,  and  saw  smiling  faces 
that  he  knew.  Some  were  of  the  dead;  but 
it  seemed  right  they  should  be  there.  Would 
they  smile  thus — would  they  whisper  so  kindly 
— if  they  knew  .  .  .? 

And  there  arose  within  him  a  weird  interior 
urging  to  tell  all; — and  that  knowledge  of  self- 
unworthiness  which  had  haunted  him  in  other 
hours,  suddenly  returned  upon  him  with  the 
enormity  of  a  nightmare, — irresistible,  appall 
ing, — like  a  sense  of  infinite  crime.  Then  he 
knew  that  he  must  tell  her  all. 

And  he  began  to  speak — to  confess  to  her 
each  hidden  blemish  of  his  life, — passionately 
watching  her  face, — feeling  for  her  power  to 
forgive, — fearfully  seeking  to  learn  if  her  pure 
hate  of  evil  might  exceed  the  measure  of  her 
sound  sweet  human  love.  .  .  .  Yet  now  she 
seemed  not  human:  all  transfigured  she  had  be 
come!  And  those  white  shapes  enfolding  her 
were  surely  never  bridal  veils,  but  vapory 


KARMA  39 


wings  that  rose  above  her  golden  head,  and 
swept  down  curving  to  her  feet. 

.  .  .  Angel! — but  with  a  woman's  heart! 
.  .  .  For  she  only  smiled  at  his  words,  at  his 
fears,  with  compassionate  lovingness, — with 
tenderness  as  of  maternal  indulgence  for  the 
follies  of  a  child.  ...  Ah!  but  all  his  follies 
had  not  been  trivial; — there  were  others  she 
never  could  forgive.  .  .  . 

But  still  she  listened, — smiling  as  one  hear 
ing  nothing  new,  with  sympathy  of  strange 
foreknowledge, — all  the  while  with  supplest 
slender  arms  uplifted,  weaving  her  marvelous 
hair. 

And  he  knew  that  all  those  there  assembled 
heard  his  every  syllable ; — yet  he  could  not  but 
speak  on, — charging  himself  with  crimes  he 
had  never  wrought, — calumniating  his  life, 
even  as  victims  of  inquisitorial  torture  shrieked 
out  self -accusation  of  impossible  sins.  But  al 
ways,  always  she  laughed  forgiveness, — and 
those  in  the  circling  shadow  likewise ; — and  he 
heard  them  commending  him, — commending 


40  KARMA 


his  sacrifice,  his  sincerity,  his  love  of  her:  in 
finitely  indulgent  for  him. 

Yet  the  more  they  praised  him,  the  greater 
became  his  fear  of  making  one  last  avowal, — 
of  uttering  that  which  was  the  simple  truth. 
For  a  weird  doubt  seized  upon  him, — a  doubt 
of  their  meaning;  and  with  the  growing  of  it, 
all  seemed  to  treacherously  change.  .  .  .  And 
the  faces  of  the  dead  were  sinister; — the  mur 
muring  hushed :  even  she  no  longer  smiled.  .  .  . 

He  would  have  whispered  it  to  her  alone; 
but  ever  as  he  sought  to  lower  his  voice,  more 
piercing  it  seemed  to  sound, — cutting  through 
the  stillness  with  frightful  audibility,  like  the 
sibilation  of  a  possessing  spirit.  .  .  .  And 
then,  in  mad  despair,  ceasing  to  hope  for  se 
crecy,  he  uttered  it  recklessly, — vociferated  it, 
— reiterated  it, — crashed  it  into  their  hearing 
with  the  violence  of  a  blasphemy. 

•  •  •  •  • 

All  vanished! — there  was  only  darkness 
about  him,  the  darkness  of  real  night.  .  .  . 
Still  trembling  with  the  terror  of  his  dream  he 


KARMA  41 


heard  his  own  heart  beat,  and  some  slow  dis 
tant  steeple-bell  strike  out  the  hour  of  four. 

IX 

Not  through  that  restless  night  alone,  but 
through  many  nights  succeeding  to  weariest 
days  of  self-questioning  and  self-recording, 
conscience  unrelentingly  revenged  every  past 
repudiation  of  its  counsel.  Day  after  day,  he 
would  tear  up  a  certain  page  and  begin  it 
afresh,  but  each  time  only  to  hear  that  vin 
dictive  inner  voice  make  protest, — deny  his 
right  to  any  palliating  word.  And  when 
everything  else  had  been  written,  the  inex 
orable  Censor  still  maintained,  still  refused  to 
attenuate,  the  self-proscription  penned  upon 
that  page.  Neither  by  finest  analysis  of  mo 
tives  and  circumstances  converging  to  the 
fault,  nor  by  any  possible  deduction  out  of 
consequences,  could  the  blackness  of  the  fact 
be  diminished:  the  great  blot  of  it,  spreading 
either  way,  strangely  discolored  the  whole. 
.  .  .  Without  that  page  his  manuscript  could 
offer  at  the  very  worst  only  a  record  of  follies 


42  KARMA 


hurtful  to  none  so  much  as  to  himself; — with 
it, — read  through  the  smirch  of  it, — no  other 
error  avowed  could  seem  innocuous  enough  to 
demand  her  absolution. 

And  the  days  wheeled  away,  filing  off  by 
weeks; — and  a  new  anxiety  began  to  shape 
for  him.  The  mere  prolongation  of  his  silence 
was  betraying  him.  Already  she  might  have 
divined  his  moral  cowardice,  and  decided 
against  him.  Before  this  imminent  menace  of 
what  he  feared  most,  he  found  himself  finally 
terrified  to  a  resolve, — as  one  leaps  into  flood 
from  fire.  He  turned  one  morning  to  his  man 
uscript  for  the  decisive  time,  re-read  once  more 
the  ever-scored  page,  feverishly  copied  it, 
folded  it  up  with  the  rest,  enveloped  and  ad 
dressed  the  whole ;  and  then,  feeling  the  inevi 
table  danger  of  another  moment's  hesitation, 
he  hurried  out  and  dropped  the  manuscript  into 
the  nearest  letter-box. 


Then  he  became  appalled  at  what  he  had 
done.  .  .  .  Seldom  does  the  whole  potential 


KARMA  43 


meaning  of  a  doubtful  act  consent  to  reveal 
itself  while  the  act  is  yet  only  contemplated; 
and  that  sudden  expansion  of  significance 
which  it  assumes  immediately  upon  accomplish 
ment,  may  form  the  most  painful  astonishment 
of  a  lifetime.  .  .  . 

Oh!  the  subtle  protean  treachery  of  words 
on  paper! — words  that,  only  spoken,  seemed 
so  harmless; — that  once  embodied  and  coiled 
in  writing,  change  nature  and  develop  teeth 
to  gnaw  the  brain  that  gave  them  visible  form! 
The  viewless  fluttering  spoken  word  is  thrice 
plead  for:  by  the  tone  which  is  the  heart  of  it, 
and  its  best  excuse  for  being, — by  the  look 
which  accompanies  it, — by  the  circumstance 
which  evokes  it.  But  incarnate  it  with  a  single 
quivering  dash  of  the  pen, — and  lo!  the  soul 
less,  voiceless,  gelid  impersonality  of  a  reptile. 
Still,  you  are  so  far  conscious  only  of  its  chill 
ing  ugliness ; — you  do  not  know  its  dumb  cru 
elty:  it  is  feigning  innocuousness  because  its 
life  is  yet  at  your  mercy, — because  it  has  not 
ceased  to  be  your  slave.  The  price  of  its  manu 
mission  is  a  postage-stamp.  Release  it,  and  it 


44  KARMA 

will  writhe  through  all  your  soul  to  tear  and  to 
envenom.  Then  you  will  be  powerless  to  pre 
vail  against  it:  freedom  will  have  given  it  the 
invulnerability  of  air ! 

.  .  .  And  words  that  might  have  been  spared 
in  sentences  that  should  have  been  reconsid 
ered, — with  what  multiformity  of  ghastliness 
they  now  swarmed  back  to  madden  him, — bit 
ing  into  memory!  How  had  he  failed  to  dis 
cern  their  whole  evil  capability, — to  under 
stand,  while  it  was  not  yet  too  late,  their  sin 
ister  power  of  shifting  color  according  to  po 
sition,  according  even  to  the  eye  that  looked 
upon  them?  Under  what  hue  would  they  re 
veal  themselves  to  her?  .  .  .  And  not  one 
could  now,  or  ever  again,  be  changed.  He  had 
flung  his  missive  into  the  machinery  of  gov 
ernment;  and  already,  doubtless,  by  steam  and 
iron,  it  was  being  whirled  to  its  destination! 

Yes ! — there  was  still  a  forlorn  hope !  What 
if  he  should  telegraph  to  have  the  manuscript 
returned  unopened?  .  .  .  But,  again, — what 
would  she  infer  from  such  a  message?  ...  A 


KARMA  45 


new  confusion  of  doubts  and  fears  and  desper 
ate  conflicting  impulses  followed.  But  the 
dread  of  her  inference  yielded  at  last  to  the 
vividly  terrible  menace  of  lines  that  he  had 
written, — ever  becoming  more  frightfully  vis 
ible  in  remembrance, — visions  that  left  him 
soul-steeped  in  a  fire-agony  of  shame!  .  .  . 
He  rushed  out  into  the  street, — hurried  to  the 
telegraph-office.  As  he  entered  it,  he  glanced 
almost  instinctively  at  the  mockingly  placid 
face  of  the  clock, — and  started,  with  a  sensa 
tion  at  his  heart  as  of  falling  in  dreams.  .  .  . 
Time  often  passes  with  a  rapidity  that  seems 
malevolent  when  the  emotions  are  in  turmoil. 
...  It  was  too  late  to  telegraph.  The  envel 
ope  had  already,  in  all  likelihood,  been  opened 
by  her  own  hands! 

XI 

It  was  done, — forever  done!  .  .  .  He  had 
cast  the  die  of  his  own  fate.  And  the  absolute 
conviction  of  his  further  helplessness  restored 
him  to  comparative  calm, — subdued  that  pas 
sion  of  emotional  pain  which  it  had  seemed  to 


46  KARMA 


him  that  he  could  endure  no  longer  and 
live.  .  .  . 

Could  she  forgive  him?  Might  she  not  be 
merciful?  Might  she  not  have  some  such  in 
tuition  of  the  nature  of  human  weakness  as 
would  impel  her  to  hold  him  pardonable  in 
view  of  the  contrition  he  had  so  earnestly  ex 
pressed?  And  might  he  not  place  some  hope 
in  her  strange  capacity  of  independent  judg 
ment, — of  estimating  character  and  action  by 
standards  wholly  at  variance  with  common 
opinion? 

Perhaps.  .  .  .  But  in  her  sublime  indiffer 
ence  to  conventional  beliefs,  there  was  always 
manifest  a  moral  confidence  steady  as  the  steel 
of  a  surgeon.  .  .  .  And  there  came  to  him  the 
first  vague  perception  of  why  he  feared  her, — 
of  what  he  feared  in  her:  a  penetrative  dynamic 
moral  power  that  he  felt  without  comprehend 
ing.  .  .  .  The  idea  of  that  power  applied  to 
the  analysis  of  his  confession,  brought  down 
his  heart  again. 

There  were  three — only  three  fearful  things 
she  might  do:  simply  condemn  him  by  her  si- 


KARMA  47 


lence ;  write  him  her  refusal ;  or  summon  him  to 
hear  from  her  own  lips  that  all  was  over.  And 
the  last  possibility  seemed  the  most  to  be  dread 
ed.  Why?  .  .  .  Was  it  because  of  an  intui 
tion  that  he  might  hear  something  more  terri 
ble  than  her  "No"?  .  .  .  He  remembered 
strange  hours  of  his  life  when  the  reality  of  an 
occurrence  feared  had  proven  infinitely  more 
painful  than  the  imagining, — though  fancy 
had  been  forewarned  and  strained  to  prepare 
him  for  the  very  worst.  The  imagined  worst 
had  never  been  the  worst:  there  were  fathom 
less  abysses  of  worse  behind  it. 

And  the  simple  word,  "Come," — solitary 
and  imperative, — in  a  note  received  two  days 
later,  suddenly  thickened  and  darkened  within 
him  this  indefinite  fear  of  an  unimaginable 
worse.  So  feels  the  prisoner,  long  waiting  for 
his  doom, — when  the  hammering  has  ceased  to 
echo  in  the  night, — and  the  iron  doors  grate 
open  to  gray  dawn, — and  the  Mask  says, 
"Come!" 


48  KARMA 


XII 

...  As  he  opened  the  door  of  the  apart 
ment  in  which  they  had  been  wont  to  meet,  and 
the  faint  familiar  fragrance  that  seemed  a  part 
of  her  life,  smote  softly  to  his  brain, — he  saw 
her  there,  already  risen,  as  one  who  knew  his 
footstep,  to  take  from  some  locked  drawer  an 
envelope  he  instantly  recognized.  The  mere 
deliberate  swift  manner  of  the  act  prepared 
him,  before  he  could  see  her  face,  for  the  ab 
sence  of  the  sweet  smile  with  which  she  had 
always  greeted  him.  She  neither  asked  him  to 
be  seated,  nor  approached  to  offer  him  her 
hand,  but  walked  directly  to  the  hearth  where 
a  bright  wood  fire  was  leaping. 

— "Do  you  wish  me  to  burn  this?"  she  asked, 
with  the  missive  in  her  hand,  and  her  eyes  flash 
ing  to  his  face.  Her  voice  had  the  ring  of 
steel! 

—"Yes,"  he  responded,  almost  in  a  whisper. 

.  .  .  Only  one  moment  he  saw  her  eyes, — 
for  he  turned  away  his  own;  but  that  single 
strong  glance  seemed  to  flame  cold  into  his  life 


KARMA  49 


like  some  divine  lightning, — incinerating  the 
uttermost  atom  of  his  hope, — consuming  the 
last  thin  wrapping  of  his  pride,  like  a  garment 
of  straw.  For  the  first  time  he  knew  himself 
spiritually  stripped  before  a  human  gaze; — 
and  with  that  knowledge  outvanished  in  shame 
all  the  weakness  of  his  passion, — all  the  sense- 
hunger  that  is  love's  superstition.  He  stood 
before  her  as  before  God, — morally  naked  as 
a  soul  in  painted  dreams  of  the  Judgment 
Day.  .  .  . 

She  tossed  the  written  paper  to  the  fire,  and 
watched  it  light  up  with  a  little  flapping  sound ; 
while  he  stood  by, — fearing  what  her  next  word 
might  be.  As  the  flame  sank,  an  air-current 
wafted  and  whirled  the  weightless  ash  up  out 
of  sight.  ...  A  moment  passed,  and  it  came 
crumbling  down  again,  by  flakes,  that  fluttered 
back  like  moths  into  the  blaze. 

— "You  say  the  woman  is  dead?"  she  ques 
tioned  at  last,  in  a  very  quiet  voice, — still  look 
ing  in  the  fire. 


50  KARMA 

He  knew  at  once  to  which  page  of  his  con 
fession  she  referred,  and  made  answer: — 

— "It  is  almost  five  years  since  she  died." 

-"And  the  child?" 

—"The  boy  is  well." 

—"And  .  .  .  your  .  .  .  friend?"  She  ut 
tered  the  words  with  a  slow,  strange  emphasis, 
— as  of  resolve  to  master  some  repulsion. 

— "He  is  still  there, — in  the  same  place." 

Then  turning  to  him  suddenly,  she  ex 
claimed, — with  a  change  of  tone  cold  and  keen 
as  a  knife : — 

— "And  when  you  wrote  me  that,,  you  had 
really  forced  yourself  to  believe  I  might  con 
done  the  infamy  of  it!  .  .  ." 

He  attempted  no  response, — so  terribly  he 
felt  himself  judged.  He  turned  his  face  away. 

— "Assuredly  you  had  some  such  hope,"  she 
resumed; — "otherwise  you  could  not  have  sent 
me  that  paper.  .  .  .  Then  by  what  moral 
standard  did  you  measure  me? — was  it  by  your 
own?  .  .  .  Certainly  your  imagination  must 
have  placed  me  somewhere  below  the  level  of 
honest  humanity, — below  the  common  moral 


KARMA  51 


watermark!  .  .  .  Conceive  yourself  judged 
by  the  world — I  mean  the  real  world, — the 
world  that  works  and  suffers ;  the  great  moral 
mass  of  truthful,  simple,  earnest  people  mak 
ing  human  society!  Would  you  dare  to  ask 
their  judgment  of  your  sin?  Try  to  imagine 
the  result ; — for  by  even  so  easy  a  test  you  can 
immediately  make  some  estimate  of  the  char 
acter  of  what  you  confessed  to  me, — as  a  proof 
of  your  affection!  ..." 

Under  the  scorn  of  her  speech  he  writhed 
without  reply.  And  kindled  by  it,  as  fire  by 
a  lens  of  ice,  there  began  to  burn  within  him 
a  sense  of  shame  to  which  all  his  previous  pain 
was  nothingness, — an  anguish  so  incomparable 
that  he  wondered  at  his  power  to  live.  .  .  . 
For  there  are  moments  of  weirdest  agony  pos 
sible  in  the  history  of  natures  that  have  not 
learned  the  highest  lesson  of  existence, — 
strange  lightning-glimpses  of  self-ability  to 
suffer, — astonishments  of  moral  perception 
suddenly  expanded  beyond  all  limit  precon 
ceived, — like  immense  awakenings  from  some 
old  dreaming,  some  state  of  soul-sleep  long  mis- 


52  KARMA 


taken  for  truth  of  life.  ...  So  sometimes,  to 
unripened  generous  hearts,  flash  the  first  fear 
ful  certitudes  of  an  ethical  law  stronger  than 
doubt  or  dogma, — the  supreme  morality  at 
once  within  and  without  all  creeds,  beyond  and 
above  all  skepticisms.  He  was  of  those  for 
whom  its  revelation  comes  never  save  through 
pain, — as  certain  tardy  fruits  are  sweetened  by 
frost; — she  was  of  those  born  into  goodness, 
inheriting  truth  as  a  divine  instinct.  And  by 
that  instinct  she  knew  him  as  it  had  not  been 
given  him  to  know  himself.  .  .  . 

— "You  think  me  cruel,"  she  resumed,  after 
a  brief  silence.  "Oh,  no! — I  am  not  cruel;  I 
am  not  unjust.  I  have  made  allowances.  I 
wished  you  to  come  and  see  me  because  in  every 
line  of  your  avowal  I  found  evidence  that  you 
did  not  know  the  meaning  of  what  you  wrote, 
• — that  even  your  shame  was  merely  in 
stinctive, — that  you  had  no  manly  sense  of  the 
exceptional  nature  of  your  sin.  And  I  do  not 
intend  to  leave  you  in  the  belief  that  so  deadly 
a  wrong  can  be  dismissed, — least  of  all  by 
yourself, — as  a  mere  folly,  something  to  be 


KARMA  53 

thought  about  as  little  as  possible.  For  the 
intrinsic  vileness  of  it  is  in  no  manner  dimin 
ished,  either  by  your  cheap  remorse  or  by  your 
incapacity  to  understand  it  except  as  a  painful 
error.  My  friend,  there  are  errors  which  na 
ture's  God  never  fails  to  punish  as  crimes. 
Sometimes  the  criminal  may  escape  the  pen 
alty;  but  some  one  else  must  bear  it.  Much 
that  is  classed  as  sin  by  the  different  codes  of 
different  creeds,  may  not  be  sin  at  all.  But 
transcendent  sin, — sin  that  remains  sin  forever 
in  all  human  concepts  of  right  and  wrong, — sin 
that  is  a  denial  of  all  the  social  wisdom  gained 
by  human  experience; — for  such  sin  there  is 
no  pardon,  but  atonement  only.  And  that  sin 
is  yours;  and  God  will  surely  exact  an  expia 
tion." 

— "Is  it  not  enough  to  lose  you?"  he  sobbed, 
— turning  at  last  his  gaze,  all  fevered  by  de 
spair,  to  seek  her  face. 

—"By  no  means!"  she  answered,  with  terri 
ble  composure.  "That  is  no  expiation!  But 
what  may  prove  at  best  a  partial  expiation,  I 
now  demand  of  you.  I  demand  it  in  God's 


54  KARMA 


name.  I  demand  it  in  your  own  behalf.  I 
demand  it  also  as  my  right  .  .  .  My  right! — 
mine! — for  you  have  wronged  me  also  by  the 
consequences  of  that  crime,  O  my  friend! — 
and  you  owe  me  the  reparation;  and  I  demand 
it  of  you — yes ! — to  the  last  drop  of  the  dregs 
of  the  bitterness  of  it!  .  .  " 

Her  merciless  calm  had  passed:  she  now 
spoke  with  passion, — and  the  force  of  her  pas 
sion  appalled  him.  Never  before  had  he  seen 
her  face  flushed  by  anger. 

— "You  will  go,  my  friend,  to  that  man 
whom  you  wronged, — that  man  who  still  lives 
and  loves  under  the  delusion  of  your  undying 
lie, — and  you  will  tell  him  frankly,  plainly, 
without  reserve,  what  you  have  dared  to  con 
fess  to  me.  You  will  ask  him  for  that  child, 
that  you  may  devote  yourself  to  your  own 
duty;  and  you  will  also  ask  how  you  may  best 
make  some  reparation.  Place  your  fortune, 
your  abilities,  your  life,  at  that  man's  disposal. 
Even  should  he  wish  to  kill  you,  you  will  have 
no  right  to  resist.  But  I  would  rather, — a 
thousand  times  rather  you  should  find  death  at 


KARMA  55 

his  hands,  than  to  know  that  the  man  I  might 
have  loved  could  perpetrate  so  black  a  crime, 
and  lack  the  moral  courage  to  make  expiation. 
...  Oh !  do  not  let  me  feel  I  have  been  totally 
deceived  in  you! — prove  to  me  that  you  are 
only  a  criminal,  and  not  a  coward, — that  you 
are  only  weak,  not  utterly  base.  .  .  .  But  do 
not  flatter  yourself  with  the  belief  that  you 
have  anything  to  gain : — I  am  not  asking  a  fa 
vor; — I  am  simply  demanding  a  right." 

For  one  moment  he  remained  stunned  by  her 
sentence  as  by  a  thunder-bolt  surpassing  all 
possible  expectation:  the  next,  he  blanched  to 
the  whiteness  of  a  dead  man.  She  saw  him 
pale, — as  though  shocked  by  the  sudden  vision 
of  a  great  peril, — and  watched  him  fearfully, 
wondering,  doubting.  Would  he  refuse  to 
right  himself  in  her  eyes, — in  God's  eyes? — 
must  she  despise  him  utterly?  But  no! — his 
color  came  back  with  a  strong  flush  that  made 
her  heart  leap. 

— "I  will  do  it,"  He  made  answer,  in  a  voice 
of  quiet  resolve. 
— "Then  go!"  she  said,  with  no  change  of 


56  KARMA 


tone.  Her  face  betrayed  no  gladness.  ...  A 
moment  more,  and  he  had  passed  from  her 
presence, — and  she  had  not  suffered  herself  to 
touch  his  vainly  outstretched  hand. 

XIII 

And  a  year  passed. 

.  .  .  She  knew  he  had  kept  his  word, — knew 
he  had  obeyed  her  in  all  things.  None  of  her 
secret  fears  had  been  realized.  He  had  totally 
changed  his  manner  of  life, — was  living,  self- 
exiled,  in  a  distant  city  with  his  boy.  He  had 
written  often  to  her, — pleading  passionate  let 
ters  which  were  never  answered.  Was  it  that 
she  doubted  him  still? — or  only  that  she  doubt 
ed  her  own  heart?  He  could  not  guess  the 
truth.  He  feared  and  hoped  and  waited ; — and 
season  followed  season. 

IThen  one  day  she  received  a  letter  from  him, 
bearing  a  post-mark  that  startled  her,  because 
it  revealed  him  so  near, — a  letter  praying  only 
to  be  allowed  to  see  her,  while  passing  through 
the  suburb  where  she  lived. 

Another  morning  brought  him  the  surprise 


KARMA  57 


of  her  reply.     He  kissed  her  name  below  the 
happy  words:  "You  may." 

XIV 

...  "I  have  brought  him  to  you,"  he  said; 
— "I  thought  you  might  wish  it.  .  .  ." 

She  did  not  seem  to  hear, — so  intently  was 
she  looking  at  the  boy,  whose  black  soft  eyes, 
beautiful  as  a  fawn's,  returned  all  timidly  her 
clear,  gray  gaze.  And  from  those  shy  dark 
orbs  there  seemed  to  look  out  upon  her  the  soul 
of  a  dead  woman,  and  a  dead  woman's  plead 
ing,  and  a  dead  woman's  pain, — and  the  beauty 
and  the  frailty  and  the  sorrow  that  had  been, — 
until  her  own  soul,  luminous  and  pure  and 
strong,  made  silent  answer: — "Be  never  fear 
ful,  O  thou  poor  lost  one! — only  by  excess  of 
love  thy  sin  was:  rest  thou  in  thy  peace!"  .  .  . 
And  something  of  heaven's  own  light,  like  a  soft 
ness  of  summer  skies,  made  all  divine  her  smile, 
as  she  knelt  to  put  her  arms  about  the  boy  and 
kiss  him, — so  that  he  wondered  at  the  sweetness 
of  her. 

And  the  father,  wondering  more,  hid  his 


58  KARMA 


face  as  he  sat  there,  and  sobbing  remained,  un 
til  he  knew  her  light  hand  upon  his  head,  caress 
ing  him  also,  and  heard  her  voice  thrill  to  him 
with  tenderness  incomprehensible : — 

— "Suffering  is  strength,  my  beloved! — suf 
fering  is  knowledge,  illumination,  the  flame 
that  purifies!  Suffer  and  be  strong.  Never 
can  you 'be  happy:  the  evil  you  have  wrought 
must  always  bring  its  pain.  But  that  pain, 
dearest,  I  will  help  you  to  bear, — and  the 
burden  that  is  atonement  I  will  aid  you  to  en 
dure; — I  will  shield  your  weakness; — I  will 
love  your  boy.  ..." 

For  the  first  time  their  lips  touched.  .  .  . 
She  had  become  again  the  Angel  of  his  dream. 


A  GHOST 


PERHAPS  the  man  who  never  wanders 
away  from  the  place  of  his  birth  may 
pass  all  his  life  without  knowing  ghosts ; 
but  the  nomad  is  more  than  likely  to  make  their 
acquaintance.  I  refer  to  the  civilized  nomad, 
whose  wanderings  are  not  prompted  by  hope 
of  gain,  nor  determined  by  pleasure,  but  sim 
ply  compelled  by  certain  necessities  of  his  be 
ing, — the  man  whose  inner  secret  nature  is 
totally  at  variance  with  the  stable  conditions  of 
a  society  to  which  he  belongs  only  by  accident. 
However  intellectually  trained,  he  must  al 
ways  remain  the  slave  of  singular  impulses 
which  have  no  rational  source,  and  which  will 
often  amaze  him  no  less  by  their  mastering 
power  than  by  their  continuous  savage  oppo 
sition  to  his  every  material  interest.  .  .  . 
These  may,  perhaps,  be  traced  back  to  some 

59 


60  KARMA 


ancestral  habit, — be  explained  by  self-evident 
hereditary  tendencies.  Or  perhaps  they  may 
not, — in  which  event  the  victim  can  only  sur 
mise  himself  the  Imago  of  some  pre-existent 
larval  aspiration — the  full  development  of  de 
sires  long  dormant  in  a  chain  of  more  limited 
lives.  .  .  . 

Assuredly  the  nomadic  impulses  differ  in 
every  member  of  the  class, — take  infinite  va 
riety  from  individual  sensitiveness  to  environ 
ment  :  the  line  of  least  resistance  for  one  being 
that  of  greatest  resistance  for  another; — no 
two  courses  of  true  nomadism  can  ever  be 
wholly  the  same.  Diversified  of  necessity  both 
impulse  and  direction,  even  as  human  nature 
is  diversified.  Never  since  consciousness  of 
time  began  were  two  beings  born  who  pos 
sessed  exactly  the  same  quality  of  voice,  the 
same  precise  degree  of  nervous  impressibility, 
or, — in  brief,  the  same  combination  of  those 
viewless  force-storing  molecules  which  shape 
and  poise  themselves  in  sentient  substance. 
Vain,  therefore,  all  striving  to  particularize  the 
curious  psychology  of  such  existences:  at  the 


A     GHOST  61 


very  utmost  it  is  possible  only  to  describe  such 
impulses  and  perceptions  of  nomadism  as  lie 
within  the  very  small  range  of  one's  own  ob 
servation.  And  whatever  in  these  be  strictly 
personal  can  have  little  interest  or  value  except 
in  so  far  as  it  holds  something  in  common  with 
the  great  general  experience  of  restless  lives. 
To  such  experience  may  belong,  I  think,  one 
ultimate  result  of  all  those  irrational  partings, 
— self  -wreckings, — sudden  isolations, — abrupt 
severances  from  all  attachment,  which  form  the 
history  of  the  nomad  .  .  .  the  knowledge  that 
a  strange  silence  is  ever  deepening  and  ex 
panding  about  one's  life,  and  that  in  that  si 
lence  there  are  ghosts. 

ii 

...  Oh!  the  first  vague  charm,  the  first 
sunny  illusion  of  some  fair  city, — when  vistas 
of  unknown  streets  all  seem  leading  to  the  re 
alization  of  a  hope  you  dare  not  even  whisper ; 
— when  even  the  shadows  look  beautiful,  and 
strange  facades  appear  to  smile  good  omen 
through  light  of  gold!  And  those  first  win- 


62  KARMA 


ning  relations  with  men,  while  you  are  still  a 
stranger,  and  only  the  better  and  the  brighter 
side  of  their  nature  is  turned  to  you !  .  .  .  All 
is  yet  a  delightful,  luminous  indefiniteness — 
sensation  of  streets  and  of  men, — like  some 
beautifully  tinted  photograph  slightly  out  of 
focus.  .  .  . 

Then  the  slow  solid  sharpening  of  details  all 
about  you, — thrusting  through  illusion  and  dis 
pelling  it, — growing  keener  and  harder  day  by 
day,  through  long  dull  seasons,  while  your  feet 
learn  to  remember  all  asperities  of  pavements, 
and  your  eyes  all  physiognomy  of  buildings 
and  of  persons, — failures  of  masonry, — fur 
rowed  lines  of  pain.  Thereafter  only  the  ach 
ing  of  monotony  intolerable, — and  the  hatred 
of  sameness  grown  dismal, — and  dread  of  the 
merciless,  inevitable,  daily  and  hourly  repe 
tition  of  things; — while  those  impulses  of  un 
rest,  which  are  Nature's  urgings  through  that 
ancestral  experience  which  lives  in  each  one  of 
us, — outcries  of  sea  and  peak  and  sky  to  man, 
— ever  make  wilder  appeal.  .  .  .  Strong  friend 
ships  may  have  been  formed;  but  there  finally 


A     GHOST  63 


comes  a  day  when  even  these  can  give  no  con 
solation  for  the  pain  of  monotony, — and  you 
feel  that  in  order  to  live  you  must  decide, — 
regardless  of  result, — to  shake  forever  from 
your  feet  the  familiar  dust  of  that  place.  .  .  . 

And,  nevertheless,  in  the  hour  of  departure 
you  feel  a  pang.  As  train  or  steamer  bears 
you  away  from  the  city  and  its  myriad  asso 
ciations,  the  old  illusive  impression  will  quiver 
back  about  you  for  a  moment, — not  as  if  to 
mock  the  expectation  of  the  past,  but  softly, 
touchingly,  as  if  pleading  to  you  to  stay;  and 
such  a  sadness,  such  a  tenderness  may  come  to 
you,  as  one  knows  after  reconciliation  with  a 
friend  misapprehended  and  unjustly  judged. 
.  .  .  But  you  will  never  more  see  those  streets, 
—except  in  dreams. 

Through  sleep  only  they  will  open  again  be 
fore  you, — steeped  in  the  illusive  vagueness  of 
the  first  long-past  day, — peopled  only  by 
friends  outreaching  to  you.  Soundlessly  you 
will  tread  those  shadowy  pavements  many 
times, — to  knock  in  thought,  perhaps,  at  doors 
which  the  dead  will  open  to  you.  .  .  .  But  with 


64  KARMA 


the  passing  of  years  all  becomes  dim — so  dim 
that  even  asleep  you  know  'tis  only  a  ghost- 
city,  with  streets  going  to  nowhere.  And  fi 
nally  whatever  is  left  of  it  becomes  confused  and 
blended  with  cloudy  memories  of  other  cities, 
— one  endless  bewilderment  of  filmy  architec 
ture  in  which  nothing  is  distinctly  recognizable, 
though  the  whole  gives  the  sensation  of  hav 
ing  been  seen  before  .  .  .  ever  so  long  ago. 

Meantime,  in  the  coure  of  wanderings  more 
or  less  aimless,  there  has  slowly  grown  upon 
you  a  suspicion  of  being  haunted, — so  fre 
quently  does  a  certain  hazy  presence  intrude 
itself  upon  the  visual  memory.  This,  however, 
appears  to  gain  rather  than  to  lose  in  definite- 
ness  :  with  each  return  its  visibility  seems  to  in 
crease.  .  .  .  And  the  suspicion  that  you  may 
be  haunted  gradually  develops  into  a  certainty. 

ill 

You  are  haunted, — whether  your  way  lie 
through  the  brown  gloom  of  London  winter, 
or  the  azure  splendor  of  an  equatorial  day, — 


A     GHOST  65 


whether  your  steps  be  tracked  in  snows,  or  in 
the  burning  black  sand  of  a  tropic  beach, — - 
whether  you  rest  beneath  the  swart  shade  of 
Northern  pines,  or  under  spidery  umbrages  of 
palm: — you  are  haunted  ever  and  everywhere 
by  a  certain  gentle  presence.  There  is  noth 
ing  fearsome  in  this  haunting  .  .  .  the  gentlest 
face  .  .  .  the  kindliest  voice — oddly  familiar 
and  distinct,  though  feeble  as  the  hum  of  a 
bee.  .  .  . 

But  it  tantalizes, — this  haunting, — like  those 
sudden  surprises  of  sensation  mihin  us,  though 
seemingly  not  of  us,  which  some  dreamers  have 
sought  to  interpret  as  inherited  remembrances, 
— recollections  of  pre-existence.  .  .  .  Vainly 
you  ask  yourself: — "Whose  voice? — whose 
face?"  It  is  neither  young  nor  old,  the  Face: 
it  has  a  vapory  indefinableness  that  leaves  it 
a  riddle; — its  diaphaneity  reveals  no  particu 
lar  tint; — perhaps  you  may  not  even  be  quite 
sure  whether  it  has  a  beard.  But  its  expres 
sion  is  always  gracious,  passionless,  smiling — 
like  the  smiling  of  unknown  friends  in  dreams, 
with  infinite  indulgence  for  any  folly,  even  a 


66  KARMA 


dream-folly.  .  .  .  Except  in  that  you  cannot 
permanently  banish  it,  the  presence  offers  no 
positive  resistance  to  your  will:  it  accepts  each 
caprice  with  obedience;  it  meets  your  every 
whim  with  angelic  patience.  It  is  never  criti 
cal, — never  makes  plaint  even  by  a  look, — 
never  proves  irksome:  yet  you  cannot  ignore 
it,  because  of  a  certain  queer  power  it  pos 
sesses  to  make  something  stir  and  quiver  in 
your  heart, — like  an  old  vague  sweet  regret, — 
something  buried  alive  which  will  not  die.  .  .  . 
And  so  often  does  this  happen  that  desire  to 
solve  the  riddle  becomes  a  pain, — that  you  fi 
nally  find  yourself  making  supplication  to  the 
Presence, — addressing  to  it  questions  which 
it  will  never  answer  directly,  but  only  by  a 
smile  or  by  words  having  no  relation  to  the 
asking, — words  enigmatic,  which  make  mys 
terious  agitation  in  old  forsaken  fields  of  mem 
ory  .  .  .  even  as  a  wind  betimes,  over  wide 
wastes  of  marsh,  sets  all  the  grasses  whisper 
ing  about  nothing.  But  you  will  question  on, 
untiringly,  through  the  nights  and  days  of 
years : — 


A     GHOST  67 


— "Who  are  you? — what  are  you? — what  is 
this  weird  relation  that  you  bear  to  me?  All 
you  say  to  me  I  feel  that  I  have  heard  before — 
but  where? — but  when?  By  what  name  am  I 
to  call  you, — since  you  will  answer  to  none 
that  I  remember?  Surely  you  do  not  live:  yet 
I  know  the  sleeping-places  of  all  my  dead, — 
and  yours  I  do  not  know !  Neither  are  you  any 
dream; — for  dreams  distort  and  change;  and 
you,  you  are  ever  the  same.  Nor  are  you  any 
hallucination;  for  all  my  senses  are  still  vivid 
and  strong.  .  .  .  This  only  I  know  beyond 
doubt, — that  you  are  of  the  Past:  you  belong 
to  memory — but  to  the  memory  of  what  dead 
suns?  .  .  ." 

Then,  some  day  or  night,  unexpectedly,  there 
comes  to  you  at  least, — with  a  soft  swift  tin 
gling  shock  as  of  fingers  invisible, — the  knowl 
edge  that  the  Face  is  not  the  memory  of  any 
one  face,  but  a  multiple  image  formed  of  the 
traits  of  many  dear  faces, — superimposed  by 
remembrance,  and  interblended  by  affection 
into  one  ghostly  personality, — infinitely  sym- 


68  KARMA 

pathetic,  phantasmally  beautiful:  a  Composite 
of  recollections!  And  the  Voice  is  the  echo 
of  no  one  voice,  but  the  echoing  of  many  voices, 
molten  into  a  single  utterance, — a  single  im 
possible  tone, — thin  through  remoteness  of 
time,  but  inexpressibly  caressing. 

IV 

Thou  most  gentle  Composite! — thou  name 
less  and  exquisite  Unreality,  thrilled  into  sem 
blance  of  being  from  out  the  sum  of  all  lost 
sympathies! — thou  Ghost  of  all  dear  vanished 
things  .  .  .  with  thy  vain  appeal  of  eyes  that 
looked  for  my  coming, — and  vague  faint  plead 
ing  of  voices  against  oblivion, — and  thin  elec 
tric  touch  of  buried  hands,  .  .  .  must  thou 
pass  away  forever  with  my  passing, — even  as 
the  Shadow  that  I  cast,  O  thou  Shadowing  of 
Souls?  .  .  . 

I  am  not  sure.  .  .  .  For  there  comes  to  me 
this  dream, — that  if  aught  in  human  life  hold 
power  to  pass — like  a  swerved  sunray  through 
interstellar  spaces, — into  the  infinite  mystery 
r . .  to  send  one  sweet  strong  vibration  through 


A     GHOST  69 


immemorial  Time  .  .  .  might  not  some  lu 
minous  future  be  peopled  with  such  as  thou? 
.  .  .  And  in  so  far  as  that  which  makes  for  us 
the  subtlest  charm  of  being  can  lend  one  choral 
note  to  the  Symphony  of  the  Unknowable  Pur 
pose, — in  so  much  might  there  not  endure  also 
to  greet  thee,  another  Composite  One, — em 
bodying,  indeed,  the  comeliness  of  many  lives, 
yet  keeping  likewise  some  visible  memory  of 
all  that  may  have  been  gracious  in  this  thy 
friend  .  ,  ? 


THE  FIRST  MUEZZIN 


"BILAL" 

If  all  that  worship  Thee  to-day 
Should  suddenly  be  swept  away, 
And  not  a  Muezzin  left  to  cry 
Through  the  silence  of  the  sky, — 
"God  is  Great!" — there  still  would  be 
Clouds  of  witnesses  for  Thee 
On  the  land  and  in  the  sea.  .  .  . 
Aye!  and  if  these,  too,  were  fled, 
And  the  earth  itself  were  dead, 
Greater  would  remain  on  high; — 
For  all  the  planets  in  the  sky, — 
Suns  that  burn  till  day  has  flown, 
Stars  that  are  with  night  restored. — 
Are  Thy  dervishes,  O  Lord, 
Wheeling  round  Thy  golden  Throne! 

— EDWIN  ARNOLD. 


THE  Traveler  slumbering  for  the  first 
time  within  the  walls  of  an  Oriental 
city,  and  in  the  vicinity  of  a  minaret, 
can  scarcely  fail  to  be  impressed  by  the  solemn 

70 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  71 

beauty  of  the  Mohammedan  Call  to  Prayer. 
If  he  have  worthily  prepared  himself,  by  the 
study  of  books  and  of  languages,  for  the  ex 
perience  of  Eastern  travel,  he  will  probably 
have  learned  by  heart  the  words  of  the  sacred 
summons,  and  will  recognize  their  syllables  in 
the  sonorous  chant  of  the  Muezzin, — while  the 
rose-colored  light  of  an  Egyptian  or  Syrian 
dawn  expands  its  flush  to  the  stars.  Four 
times  more  will  he  hear  that  voice  ere  morning 
again  illuminates  the  east: — under  the  white 
blaze  of  noon;  at  the  sunset  hour,  when  the 
west  is  fervid  with  incandescent  gold  and  ver 
milion;  in  the  long  after-glow  of  orange  and 
emerald  fires;  and,  still  later,  when  a  million 
astral  lamps  have  been  lighted  in  the  vast  and 
violet  dome  of  God's  everlasting  mosque.  Per 
haps  the  last  time  he  may  distinguish,  in  the 
termination  of  the  chant,  words  new  and  mys 
terious  to  his  ear;  and  should  he  question  his 
dragoman, — as  did  Gerard  de  Nerval* — re 
garding  their  meaning,  he  would  doubtless  ob- 


*  Le  premier  fois  que  j'entendis  la  voix  lente  et  sereine  du 
muezzin,  au  coucher  du  Soleii,  je  me  sentis  pris  d'une  indicible 


72  KARMA 


tain  a  similar  interpretation: — "O  ye  that  are 
about  to  sleep,  commend  your  souls  to  Him 
who  never  sleeps!"  Sublime  exhortation! — re 
calling  the  words  of  that  Throne-verse  which 
jewelsmiths  of  the  Orient  engrave  upon  agates 
and  upon  rubies, — "Drowsiness  cometh  not  to 
Him,  nor  sleep/'  And  if  the  interpreter 
should  know  something  of  the  hagiology  of 
Islam,  he  might  further  relate  that  the  first 
Muezzin,  the  first  singer  of  the  Adzan,  was  the 
sainted  servant  of  Mahomet, — even  that  Bilali- 
bin-Rabah  whose  tomb  is  yet  pointed  out  to 
travelers  at  Damascus. 

Now  Bilal  was  an  African  black,  an  Abys 
sinian, — famed  for  his  fortitude  as  a  confessor, 
for  his  zeal  in  the  faith  of  the  Prophet,  and 
for  the  marvelous  melody  of  his  voice,  whose 
echoes  have  been  caught  up  and  prolonged  and 
multiplied  by  all  the  muezzins  of  Islam, 
through  the  passing  of  more  than  twelve  hun 
dred  years.  Bilal  sang  before  the  idea  of  the 

melancholic, — "Qu'est-ce  qu'il  dit?"  demandai-je  au  drogman. 
—"La  Allah  ila  Allah!  .  .  .  II  n'y  a  d'autre  Dieu  que  Dieu!" 
— "Je  connais  cette  formula;  mais  ensuite?" — "O  vous  qui  allez 
dormir,  recommendez  vos  ames  a  Celui  qui  ne  dort  jamais!" — 
Voyage  en  Orient  "Le  Drogman  Abdullah." 


THE     FIKST     MUEZZIN  73 

first  minaret  had  been  conceived, — before  blind 
men  were  selected  to  chant  the  Adzan,  lest  from 
the  great  height  of  the  muezzin  towers  others 
might  gaze  upon  the  level  roofs  of  the  city,  and 
behold  sights  forbidden  to  Moslem  eyes.  To 
day  innumerable  minarets  point  to  heaven: 
even  the  oases  of  the  Sahara  have  their  muez 
zin-towers, — sometimes  built  in  ignorance  of 
the  plumb-line,  and  so  contorted  that  they  seem 
to  writhe, — like  those  at  Ouargla  which  Victor 
Largeau  saw  in  1877.  And  the  words  chanted 
by  all  the  muezzins  of  the  Moslem  world, — 
whether  from  the  barbaric  brick  structures 
which  rise  above  "The  Tombs  of  the  Desert," 
or  from  the  fairy  minarets  of  the  exquisite 
mosque  at  Agra, — are  the  words  first  sung  by 
the  mighty  voice  of  Bilal. 

Even  at  the  present  day  many  special  quali 
fications  are  required  of  him  who  would  sing 
the  Adzan:  he  must  be  learned  in  the  Koran: 
his  name  must  be  without  reproach;  his  voice 
must  be  clear,  suave  and  sonorous,  his  diction 
precise  and  pure.  But  in  earlier  ages  of  Islam, 
while  the  traditional  memory  of  Bilal's  voice 


74  KARMA 


was  strong  in  the  minds  of  the  faithful,  extra 
ordinary  vocal  powers  may  have  been  required 
of  those  appointed  to  the  office  of  muezzin. 
Moslih-Eddin  Sadi,  the  far-famed  Persian 
poet,  relates  in  his  Gulistan  more  than  one 
singular  anecdote  illustrating  the  ideas  of  his 
day  in  regard  to  the  selection  of  muezzins  and 
Koran-readers.  .  .  .  "Some  one,  in  the 
Mosque  of  Sand  jar," — he  tells  us, — "used  to 
make  the  Call  to  prayer  with  good  intent,  yet 
with  a  voice  repugnant  to  all  that  heard  it. 
And  the  Chief  of  the  mosque  was  a  just  emir, 
whose  every  action  was  good.  Accordingly  he 
sought  to  avoid  giving  a  wound  to  the  heart 
of  that  man.  He  spake  to  him  thus,  saying: 
*O  sir!  there  are  old  muezzins  attached  unto 
this  temple,  to  each  one  of  whom  is  allotted 
a  salary  of  five  dinars,  and  verily  I  will  give 
thee  ten  dinars  to  betake  thyself  to  another 
place.'  The  man  agreed  thereunto  and  went 
his  way.  But  after  a  certain  time  he  returned 
to  the  emir,  and  said  to  him:  *O  my  lord! 
truly  thou  hast  done  me  an  injustice  by  in 
ducing  me  to  leave  this  monastery  for  ten 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  75 

dinars!  At  the  place  to  which  I  went  they 
have  offered  me  twenty  dinars  to  go  elsewhere, 
— and  I  refuse!'  Then  the  emir  smiled  and 
made  answer:  'Take  heed  thou  accept  them 
not;  for  they  will  surely  agree  to  pay  thee 
even  so  much  as  fifty  dinars!'" — Chap.  IV; 
Upon  the  Advantage  of  Silence. 

Not  less  amusingly  significant  is  the  anec 
dote  which  follows  in  the  same  portion  of  the 
book, — anecdote  which  will  be  more  fully  ap 
preciated,  doubtless,  when  we  state  that  the  old 
Arabian  manner  of  reading  the  Koran  ranks 
perhaps  first  among  all  preserved  styles  of  re 
ligious  cantillation : — "A  man  who  had  a  dis 
agreeable  voice  was  reading  the  Koran  aloud. 
A  sensible  man,  passing  by,  asked  of  the 
reader:  'What  is  thy  salary?'  He  answered: 
'Nothing.'  Then  demanded  the  other, — 
*  Wherefore  dost  thou  take  so  much  pains?' 
The  man  responded:  *I  read  for  the  love  of 
God.'  Then  said  the  other:  *O,  for  the  love 
of  God,  do  not  read!'" 

Son  of  an  Abyssinian  slave-girl,  Bilal  began 
life  as  a  slave. 


76  KARMA 

Little  seems  to  be  known  of  his  earlier  years. 

He  was  very  dark, — "with  negro-features 
and  bushy  hair,"  Sir  William  Muir  tells  us, 
upon  the  authority  of  Arabian  writers ;  he  was 
also  very  tall,  and  gaunt  as  a  camel; — not 
comely  to  look  upon,  but  vigorous  and  sinewy. 
Among  the  slaves  of  Mecca  the  first  preaching 
of  Mahomet  took  deep  effect: — to  the  hearts 
of  those  strangers  and  bondsmen  in  a  strange 
land  of  bondage,  the  idea  of  a  Universal  Father 
must  have  been  a  balm  of  consolation.  Bilal 
would  seem  to  have  been  the  first  convert  of 
his  race,  inasmuch  as  the  Prophet  was  wont  to 
speak  of  him  as  "the  first-fruits  of  Abyssinia." 
Perhaps  the  young  slave  had  obtained  from  his 
dark  mother  such  rude  notions  of  that  Chris 
tianity  implanted  in  Abyssinia  during  the 
fourth  century,  as  might  have  prepared  his 
mind  to  accept  the  monotheism  of  Islam. 

But  when  the  period  of  persecution  com 
menced,  it  was  upon  those  converted  slaves  that 
the  wrath  of  the  idolatrous  Koreish  fell  most 
heavily.  Among  the  Arabs  it  had  been,  from 
time  immemorial,  a  chivalric  duty  to  protect 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  77 

one's  own  kindred  at  the  risk  even  of  life ;  and 
the  shedding  of  Arab  blood  by  Arab  hands  in 
time  of  peace  never  failed  to  provoke  such  re 
prisals  as  often  entailed  a  long  war  of  ven 
detta.  By  reason  of  this  salutary  social  law, 
Mahomet  and  his  free  Arab  converts  felt  them 
selves  comparatively  secure  from  dangerous 
violence;  but  the  unprotected  slaves  who  had 
embraced  the  new  faith  were  cruelly  beaten, 
often  menaced  with  death,  and  tortured  by 
naked  exposure  to  the  blistering  sun.  Under 
such  suffering,  to  which  the  torments  of  hun 
ger  and  thirst  were  superadded, — the  tempta 
tions  of  cool  water  and  palatable  food  and 
shady  rest  proved  too  much  for  the  courage  of 
the  victims:  one  by  one  they  uttered,  with  their 
lips  at  least,  the  prescribed  malediction  upon 
their  Prophet,  and  the  idolatrous  oath  by  Lat 
and  Ozza.  Afterwards,  many  of  them  wept 
bitterly  for  their  recantation.  But  Mahomet 
gave  ample  consolation  to  the  poor  renegades ; 
and  for  their  sake  that  special  exemption  for 
reluctant  apostasy  was  provided  in  the  Koran: 
— "Whosoever  denieth  GOD  after  that  he  hath 


78  KARMA 


believed, — EXCEPTING  HIM  WHO  is  FORCIBLY 

COMPELLED    THERETO,    HIS    HEART   REMAINING 
STEADFAST  IN  THE  FAITH OH  SUCh  TCSteth  the 

wrath  of  God."— Sura  XVI,  108. 

Bilal  alone  never  apostatized:  the  agony  of 
blows,  the  fiery  pains  of  thirst,  the  long  expo 
sure  to  the  sun  upon  the  scorching  gravel  of 
the  Valley  of  Mecca, — all  failed  to  bend  his 
iron  will ;  and  to  the  demands  of  his  persecutors 
he  invariably  answered, — Ahad!  Ahad:  "One, 
one  only  God!"  This  episode  of  his  confessor- 
ship  has  been  chosen  by  the  Poet  Farid  Uddin 
Attar  as  the  text  of  a  pious  admonition  con 
tained  in  the  superb  invocation  of  the  Mantic 
Uttair: — "Bilal  received  upon  his  feeble  body 
many  blows  with  clubs  of  wood  and  thongs  of 
leather:  his  blood  flowed  in  abundance  beneath 
the  strokes, — yet  never  did  he  cease  to  cry  out, 
'God  is  one,— God  is  the  only  God!'  " 

It  happened  one  day,  while  the  poor  Abys 
sinian  was  being  thus  tormented,  that  a  small, 
lithe,  slightly  built  man,  with  handsome  aqui 
line  features  and  a  singularly  high  forehead, 
suddenly  appeared  among  the  spectators  of 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  79 

Bilal's  fortitude  and  suffering.  This  slender 
little  man  was  the  merchant  Abdallah,  son  of 
Othman  Abu  Cahafa, — but  better  known  to 
students  of  Moslem  history  as  Abu  Bekr,  fa 
mous  as  the  bosom  friend  of  the  Prophet,  his 
comrade  in  the  Fight,  and  his  companion  in 
that  famous  cavern  over  whose  entrance  fond 
tradition  avers  that  spiders  wove  a  miraculous 
veil  of  webs  to  hide  the  fugitives, — Abu  Bekr, 
also  called  Al  Siddick,  "the  True,"  "father  of 
the  virgin," — father  of  Mahomet's  future  wife 
Ayesha,  and  destined  to  succeed  him  in  the 
Khalifate.  Already  he  had  expended  the 
greater  part  of  a  fortune  of  forty  thousand  dir- 
hems  in  purchasing  the  freedom  of  slaves  per 
secuted  because  of  their  conversion  to  Islam. 
These  were  mostly  women  or  weaklings.  "O 
my  son!"  Abu  Cahafa  was  wont  to  say  to  him, 
—"I  see  that  thou  freest  weak  women;  but  if 
thou  wert  to  free  strong  men,  they  would  stand 
by  thee,  and  repel  harm  from  thee."  "Nay, 
father!"  would  Abu  Bekr  reply; — "I  desire 
only  those  things  which  are  of  God!"  And  the 
Traditionists  record  that  by  reason  of  this 


80  KARMA 


pious  squandering  of  his  wealth,  Al  Siddick  at 
last  found  himself  reduced  to  wear  a  coarse 
garment  of  goat's  hair,  "pinned  together  at 
his  breast  with  a  wooden  skewer." 

Abu  Bekr  did  not  long  remain  a  silent  wit 
ness  of  BilaFs  resolution:  he  negotiated  upon 
the  spot  for  the  purchase  of  the  slave,  and  suc 
ceeded  in  obtaining  him  from  his  owners — 
"Umayyah-b-Khalaf  and  Ubayy-b-Khalaf"- 
f  or  a  cloak  and  ten  pieces  of  money.  Little  did 
any  of  the  spectators  of  that  bargaining  imag 
ine  the  day  would  ever  come  when  Umayyah 
and  his  son  might  vainly  beg  mercy  from  the 
slave  to  whom  they  had  shown  no  mercy.  Ten 
years  later,  after  the  furious  battle  of  Bedr,  it 
was  BilaTs  turn;  his  keen  eye  singled  out  his 
former  owners  from  among  the  multitude  of 
Koreishite  prisoners ;  and  it  was  his  grim  satis 
faction  to  have  them  slain  before  his  face, — 
for  the  faith  of  Islam  did  not  enjoin  the  re 
turning  of  good  for  evil. 

Now  Bilal  was  the  first  really  valuable  slave 
redeemed  by  Abu  Bekr,  who  immediately  after 
the  purchase  had  set  him  free,  "for  the  love  of 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  81 

God."  Bilal  was  a  powerful  man;  the  feeble 
ness  spoken  of  by  the  Persian  poet  must  only 
be  understood  as  referring  to  the  weakness  of 
human  nature  by  contrast  with  spiritual 
strength.  Calumniators  were  not  slow  to  de 
clare  that  the  Abyssinian  had  been  bought  free 
for  purely  selfish  motives ;  a  report  apt  to  find 
credence  in  a  community  where  the  devout 
merchant  had  long  been  known  as  a  shrewd 
speculator  and  a  hard  bargainer.  Mahomet 
wrathfully  rebuked  this  malicious  gossip;  and 
it  is  traditional  that  his  reproof  is  embodied  in 
the  Ninetieth-and-second  Sura  of  the  Koran, 
entitled  THE  NIGHT, — comprising  that  part 
of  its  text  from  the  opening  line,  "By  the 
Night  when  it  covereih"  to  the  close  of  the 
words,  "Verily,  your  endeavor  is  different!" 
•  •  • 

Thus  it  happened  that  Bilal  obtained  his 
manumission,  to  become  the  devoted  servant 
of  Mahomet,  and  to  perform  a  great  part  in 
the  expanding  history  of  Islam.  There  is  a 
legend  that,  after  the  Flight  of  the  Prophet, 
he  and  others  of  the  faithful  temporarily  re- 


82  KARMA 


maining  in  Mecca,  were  again  persecuted  by 
the  Koreish;  but  this  account  is  totally  dis 
credited  by  the  best  modern  authorities  upon 
the  history  of  Mohammedanism.  We  next 
hear  of  Bilal  at  Medina,  in  the  character  of 
The  First  Muezzin. 

II 

During  the  infancy  of  Mohammedanism, 
when  the  faithful  ones  dwelt  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  their  prophet's  home,  the  Adzdn  was 
unknown: — the  simpler  cry:  To  public  prayer! 
being  easily  heard  by  all.  It  was  not  until 
after  the  building  of  the  first  mosque  at  Me 
dina,  and  after  Mahomet  had  changed  the 
Kibla, — or  the  direction  toward  which  the  wor 
shipers  turned  their  faces — from  Jerusalem 
to  Mecca  and  its  Kaaba,  that  the  Adzan  was 
established.  But  Jerusalem  retains  a  large 
place  in  the  Moslem  legend  and  remains  dear 
to  Moslem  faith; — for  hath  it  not  been  re 
corded  in  the  Traditions  that  among  the 
greater  signs  of  the  Last  Hour,  shall  be  the 
coming  of  "Jesus  the  son  of  Mary"  to  Jeru- 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  83 

salem  even  at  the  moment  of  morning  prayer, 
when  the  Mosque  of  Omar  will  be  lighted  by 
the  shining  of  His  face,  and  He  shall  take  the 
place  of  the  awe-stricken  Imam,  and  shall  con 
found  all  those  that  call  themselves  Christians 
by  uttering  in  mighty  tones  the  great  confes 
sion  of  Islam: — Aschaduan  na  Mohammed 
rasoul  Allah! 

The  idea  of  the  Adzan  was  obtained  in  a 
most  singular  way.  After  the  building  of  that 
Mosque  of  Mahomet,  which,  despite  the  hum 
bleness  of  its  material,  really  formed  the  model 
for  Saracenic  architecture,  it  soon  became  evi 
dent  that  the  old  manner  of  summoning  the 
congregation  to  worship  was  unsuited  to  the 
new  conditions,  and  utterly  devoid  of  that  so 
lemnity  which  ought  to  characterize  all  public 
performance  of  religious  duty.  At  first  the 
Prophet  bethought  him  to  have  a  trumpet 
made;  but  having  removed  the  Kibla  from 
Jerusalem  he  could  ill  persuade  himself  to 
adopt  an  instrument  used  by  the  Jews  in  cer 
tain  ceremonial  observances.  Then  he  thought 
of  having  a  bell  rung  at  certain  regular  hours ; 


84  KARMA 


but  there  was  no  one  in  Medina  capable  of 
making  such  a  bell  as  he  desired,  and  he  had 
almost  fixed  his  choice  upon  a  wooden  gong, 
when  it  came  to  pass  that  a  certain  citizen  of 
Medina  dreamed  a  strange  dream. 

It  seemed  to  him  that  he  beheld,  passing 
through  the  moonlit  street  before  his  dwelling, 
a  stranger  uncommonly  tall,  clad  in  green  rai 
ment,  and  carrying  in  his  hand  a  large  and 
beautiful  bell.  And  it  seemed  to  the  sleeper 
also,  that,  having  approached  the  tall  stranger, 
he  asked:  "Wilt  thou  sell  me  thy  bell?"— and 
that  the  tall  man  smilingly  returned:  "Tell 
me  for  what  purpose  thou  seekest  to  buy  it." 
"Verily,"  answered  the  dreamer  in  his  dream, 
— "it  is  for  our  Lord  Mahomet  that  I  wish  to 
obtain  it,  that  he  may  therewith  summon  the 
faithful  to  prayer." 

"Nay!"  said  the  stranger,  seeming  to  grow 
taller  as  he  spake, — "I  will  teach  thee  a  better 
way  than  that!  Let  a  crier  cry  aloud,  even 
thus.  ..."  And  in  a  voice  so  deep,  so  won 
derful, — so  superhumanly  sonorous,  so  super- 
naturally  sweet  that  a  great  and  holy  fear 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  85 

came  upon  the  listener,  he  chanted  the  Adzdn 
of  Islam, — even  as  it  is  chanted  to-day,  from 
the  western  coast  of  Africa  to  the  eastern  boun 
dary  of  Hindostan: — 

"God  is  Great! 
"God  is  Great! 

"I  bear  witness  there  is  no  other  God  but  God! 
"I  bear  witness  that  Mahomet  is  the  Prophet 
of  God! 

"Come  unto  Prayer! 
"Come  unto  Salvation! 

"God  is  Great! 
"There  is  no  other  God  but  God!" 

.  .  .  Awakening  with  the  vibrant  melody  of 
that  marvelous  voice  still  in  his  ears,  the  good 
Moslem  hastened  to  the  Prophet  with  the  story 
of  his  dream.  Mahomet  received  him  as  one 
bearing  a  revelation  from  heaven;  and,  re 
membering  the  uncommon  vocal  powers  of  his 
devoted  Bilal,  bade  the  Abyssinian  to  sound 
the  Call  to  Prayer,  even  as  the  words  thereof 
had  been  revealed  to  the  dreamer.  It  was  yet 


86  KARMA 


deep  night:  ere  dawn  the  First  Muezzin  had 
learned  the  duties  of  his  new  office,  and  at  the 
earliest  blush  of  day,  the  slumberers  of  Medina 
were  aroused  by  the  far-echoing  and  magnifi 
cent  voice  of  the  Abyssinian,  chanting  the 
Adzan  from  the  summit  of  a  lofty  dwelling 
hard  by  the  Mosque.  .  .  .  Does  not  the  open 
ing  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  graceful  Min 
aret — that  architectural  feature  to  which, 
above  all  others,  the  picturesqueness  of  Moslem 
cities  is  most  largely  due, — rightly  begin  with 
BilaTs  ascent  to  the  starlit  housetop  in  Medina, 
twelve  hundred  years  ago? 

And  during  all  those  centuries  Islam  has 
known  no  day  in  which  the  cry  of  the  Muezzin 
has  not  gone  up  to  God.  Still  the  chanting 
of  the  Adzan  times  the  passing  of  the  hours 
for  the  populations  of  innumerable  cities  ;*  and 
it  is  among  the  Traditions  that  it  shall  also 
signal  the  approach  of  the  last  hour,  the  end  of 

*  It  is  rarely  indeed  that  such  an  irregularity  occurs  as  might 
have  been  suggested  in  the  beautiful  lines  of  Sadi: 

"The  Muezzin  has  lifted  up  his  voice  before  the  time:  he 
knoweth  not  how  much  of  the  night  is  passed !  .  .  .  Ask  thou 
of  mine  eyes  how  long  the  night, — for  sleep  hath  not  visited 
mine  eye-lids  even  for  one  brief  moment." — Gulistan. 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  87 

time, — when  the  last  Imam  Mahdi,  the  Anti 
christ  of  Moslem  belief,  shall  announce  his  com 
ing  by  singing  the  Call  in  so  mighty  a  voice 
that  the  sound  will  roll  around  the  world. 

The  summons  to  prayer  has  ever  been  obeyed 
with  a  scrupulous  punctuality  that  evokes  the 
surprise  and  admiration  of  travelers;  and  this 
well  known  Moslem  fidelity  to  religious  duty 
has,  more  than  once  in  the  history  of  Islam, 
been  cruelly  taken  advantage  of.  It  was  at 
Nishapoor, — the  city  beloved  of  the  Perfumer 
of  Souls,  that  Attar  by  whom  Bilal  has  been 
sung  of  in  "The  Language  of  Birds,"  that  the 
Adzan  was  perhaps  first  chanted  for  a  treach 
erous  end.  During  the  eighth  year  of  the 
seventh  century,  the  city  was  utterly  destroyed 
by  the  hordes  of  Ghengis  Kjhan.  In  their 
role  of  exterminators  the  Tartars  ever  observed 
one  practice  unparalleled  for  sinister  cruelty 
and  cunning.  This  was,  after  having  with 
drawn  from  a  wasted  place,  to  suddenly  return 
thither  a  few  days  later,  so  as  to  surprise  any 
survivors  who  might  have  chanced  to  escape 
the  fury  of  fire  and  sword,  or  such  as  might 


88  KARMA 


have  returned  to  search  for  valued  objects 
among  the  smouldering  ruins.  Returning  thus 
to  Nishapoor  the  Mongol  leader  caused  the 
Adzan  to  be  sounded;  and  by  this  brutal  de 
vice  it  is  said  that  many  were  lured  from  their 
secure  refuges  to  slaughter.  Well  might  a 
Persian  historian  say  of  those  hordes :  "Their 
aim  was  the  destruction  of  the  human  race  and 
the  ruin  of  the  world,  not  the  desire  of  do 
minion  or  of  plunder." 

in 

In  the  luminous  atmosphere  of  tradition, 
the  voice  of  Bilal  vibrates  for  us  like  the 
voice  of  the  Stranger  in  Green  Raiment,  su- 
perhumanly,  paradisaically.  After  the  lapse 
of  so  many  hundred  years  it  were  difficult  in 
deed  to  determine  the  precise  character  of  the 
African's  voice,  or  to  particularize  the  indu 
bitable  merits  of  his  chant.  But  if  any  ra 
tional  inference  whatever  may  be  drawn  from 
the  highly  florid  evidence  of  the  many  tradi 
tions  concerning  him,  we  have  a  right  to  sup 
pose  that  BilaTs  voice  was  a  baritone  of  ex- 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  89 

traordinary  range  and  volume,  in  strong  con 
trast  to  the  shrill  and  effeminate  Arabian 
tenor.  There  is  reason  to  doubt  whether  any 
of  the  singers  famous  in  the  annals  of  the  pre- 
Islamic  age,  or  "period  of  Ignorance" — 
Djaheliah — belonged  to  that  race  so  effec 
tively  characterized  by  a  French  traveler  as 
un  peuple  criard.  As  M.  le  Docteur  Perron 
tells  us  in  that  delicious  book  Les  Femmes 
Arabes  (published  at  Algiers  in  1858),  most 
of  them  were  slaves;  and  nearly  all  the  slaves 
held  by  the  Arabs  before  the  advent  of  Ma 
homet  were  Abyssinians  or  negroes.  It  is 
quite  probable  that  those  especially  celebrated 
female  singers,  Youmad  and  Youad, — sur- 
named  the  Djerradah  Ad,  or  Crickets  of  the 
Adides,  and  some  of  whose  compositions  are 
still  extant, — were  Abyssinian  girls.  They 
were  owned  by  an  Arab  of  the  Beni  Ad, — Ab- 
dallah,  son  of  Djoudan, — concerning  whom 
various  beautiful  traditions  have  been  pre 
served.  In  almost  all  periods  of  Arabian  his 
tory,  mestizos,  black  freedmen,  or  the  children 
of  African  slaves,  found  occasion  to  distinguish 


90  KARMA 


themselves  as  poets,  artists  or  musicians.  One 
of  those  swarthy  singers,  whom  the  Arabs 
termed  by  reason  of  their  color,  "The  Ravens," 
occupied  so  high  a  place  that  his  songs  are 
classed  with  the  best  productions  of  the  best 
era  of  Arabian  poetry,  and  one  of  the  immor 
tal  mohallakats,  or  "Suspended  Poems,"  bears 
his  name:  Antarah.  Khoufaf,  the  warrior- 
poet  and  cousin  of  the  famous  Khaysa — (one 
of  the  greatest  female  singers  of  the  desert)  — 
was  a  quadroon.  Chanfare,  another  Raven, — 
a  poet  of  no  little  merit, — singly  declared  war 
against  the  whole  tribe  of  the  Benou-Abs  who 
had  killed  his  father-in-law  for  no  other  rea 
son  than  that  he  dared  to  bestow  his  daugh 
ter's  hand  upon  the  son  of  a  slave.  Chanfara 
swore  to  kill  a  hundred  men  of  the  tribe; — 
ninety-nine  fell  beneath  his  hand,  before  he 
was  hunted  down  and  slaughtered  like  a  wild 
beast; — long  afterward,  one  of  the  Benou- 
Abs,  trampling  upon  the  bleaching  skull  of  the 
poet,  lacerated  his  naked  foot  and  died  of  the 
wound,  so  that  the  oath  of  Chanfara  did  not 
fail  of  accomplishment.  Mahomet  used  often 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  91 

to  regret  that  he  had  not  lived  in  the  time  of 
Antarah, — less,  probably,  because  he  admired 
the  poetry  of  the  half-breed  nomad,  than  be 
cause  he  recognized  the  value  to  his  own  cause 
of  such  a  warrior-singer,  who  could  have  ral 
lied  all  the  freedmen  of  the  desert  about  the 
standard  of  a  Prophet  who  preached  equality. 
The  spirit  of  Islam  gradually  suppressed  the 
beautiful  poetry  of  the  desert, — "warmly- 
colored  as  the  nature  of  that  region,  ardent  as 
its  sands,  burning  as  its  sun;"  but  although 
the  Ravens  no  longer  composed  mohallakats, 
they  continued  to  sing.  No  small  number  of 
the  celebrated  musicians  who  flourished  dur 
ing  the  first  three  centuries  of  Islam  *  were 
half-breeds  or  blacks.  Said-ibn-Mousadjih, 
whose  goods  were  confiscated  by  order  of  the 
Caliph  Abd-el  Melik  on  the  ground  that  by 
the  charm  of  his  singing  he  had  excited  the 
sons  of  the  aristocracy  to  ruin  themselves  in 
giving  him  presents,  was  a  negro  of  Mecca,  t 

*  See  Caussin  de  Perceval: — "Notices  Anecdotiques  sur  les 
principaux  Musiciens  Arabes." 

t  Said,  however,  went  to  Damascus,  obtained  an  audience 
of  the  Caliph,  and  in  lieu  of  pleading  his  case  in  words,  sang 
one  of  his  best  compositions.  On  hearing  him  the  Caliph  re- 


92  KARMA 


Abou  Mahdjan  Nossayb,  son  of  the  negro  poet 
Rebah,  was  honored  by  many  governors  and 
caliphs  from  the  day  of  Abd-el-Melik  to  the 
time  of  Hisham; — Yezid  II  one  day  filled  his 
mouth  with  fine  pearls.  Abou  Abbad  Mabed, 
prince  of  singers  in  his  day,  charmed  three 
Caliphs  in  succession.  Yezid  fainted  with  de 
light  at  hearing  the  negro  sing; — the  succeed 
ing  Caliph  once  made  him  a  gift  of  12,000 
pieces  of  gold  ($33,600) :— and  Walid  II,  in 
whose  palace  he  died,  led  the  funeral  cortege 
accompanied  by  his  royal  brother,  both  at 
tired  in  robes  of  mourning.  The  singer  Sal- 
lamah  el-Zarka, — "the  Brunette," — who  re 
ceived  for  a  single  kiss  two  pearls  worth  40,000 
drachmas,  was  probably  a  quadroon  girl. 
Sallamah,  or  Sellamat-el-Cass,  of  Medina,  and 
Habbaba,  her  companion,  were  pretty  half- 
breeds  of  Medina.  The  story  of  Caliph 
Yezid's  love  for  the  latter,  and  his  death  for 
grief  at  her  loss,  is  one  of  the  most  touching 
narratives  in  Arabian  history.  Ample  proof 

stored  the  confiscated  property,  loaded  the  singer  with  gifts, 
and  even  declared  he  could  excuse  those  who  ruined  themselves 
for  the  pleasure  of  hearing  so  mighty  a  singer. 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  93 

that  the  voices  of  black  slaves  and  their  method 
of  singing  possessed  a  peculiar  charm  for  their 
Moslem  masters  may  be  found  in  the  works  of 
most  celebrated  Arabian  and  even  Persian 
authors.  Ismail  ibn-Djami  of  Mecca, — the 
greatest  singer  of  the  golden  Age  of  Islam, — 
once  paid  a  negress  four  dirhems  to  teach  him 
a  curious  air  that  he  heard  her  sing  while  car 
rying  a  water  jar  upon  her  head.  Afterward 
he  sang  the  same  air  for  Haroun  el-Raschid, 
who  declared  he  had  never  heard  anything  so 
original  before,  and  paid  the  artist  4,000 
pieces  of  gold  ($11,200)  as  a  reward, — to 
gether  with  a  house  luxuriously  furnished,  two 
men-servants  and  two  pretty  girl-slaves.  Sadi 
the  Persian  poet  has  related  sundry  instances 
which  show  that  negro-singers  were  still  highly 
prized  at  a  later  day.  The  following  anecdote 
is  told  in  that  portion  of  his  Gulistan  entitled 
"On  the  Manners  of  Dervishes;" — and  the 
poet  relates  it  as  a  personal  experience: — 

.  .  .  "Once,  voyaging  to  Hedjaz,  a  band  of 
sensible  youths  were  my  friendly  companions. 
Sometimes  they  murmured  to  themselves,  and 


94  KARMA 


repeated  certain  mystic  verses.  And  there  was 
one  with  us,  a  Devotee,  who  disapproved  the 
conduct  of  Dervishes,  having  indeed  no  knowl 
edge  of  their  suffering.  Now  when  we  had 
arrived  at  the  Palmtree  of  the  children  of 
Helial,  a  young  negro-boy  came  forth  from  an 
Arab  encampment,  and  lifted  up  such  a  voice 
as  might  even  have  called  down  the  birds  of 
heaven.  And  I  saw  the  camel  of  the  Devotee 
become  excited;  it  cast  its  rider  to  the  ground, 
and  took  its  way  to  the  desert.  'O  Sheikh!'  I 
cried,  'the  voice  of  that  child  hath  made  im 
pression  even  upon  an  animal,  and  yet  hath 
made  no  impression  upon  thee.' ' 

It  has  been  a  custom  among  the  Arabs,  from 
prehistoric  times,  to  encourage  camels  on  the 
march  by  the  chanting  of  verses ;  and  Gentius, 
commenting  upon  this  fact  in  his  quaint  Latin 
translation  of  the  Gulistan  (Amsterdam, 
1654),  relates  a  still  more  extraordinary  anec 
dote  : — 

.  .  .  "An  author  of  much  weight  recounts 
that  he  himself,  while  traveling  in  the  Arabian 
deserts,  was  once  received  at  a  house  whose 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  95 

proprietor  had  just  lost  all  his  camels, — and 
that  a  little  negro-slave  came  to  him,  and 
prayed  him,  saying:  *O  traveler,  thou  wilt 
not  displease  my  master  by  interceding  with 
him  for  the  pardon  of  my  fault.'  When  they 
were  at  table,  therefore,  the  traveler  said:  'I 
will  not  partake  of  any  nourishment  until  thou 
shalt  have  pardoned  this  slave  his  offense.' 
Then  the  master  said:  'This  slave  is  a  rascal; 
he  hath  lost  all  my  riches  and  reduced  me  to 
desperate  straits  .  .  .  this  slave  is  gifted  with 
a  most  sweet  voice ;  and  having  made  him  con 
ductor  of  my  camels,  he  so  excited  them  to  ex 
ertion  by  the  charm  of  his  singing  that  in  one 
day  they  made  a  three  days'  journey;  but  upon 
being  relieved  of  their  loads  at  the  end  of  the 
voyage,  they  all  died.  Nevertheless  in  consid 
eration  of  the  hospitality  I  have  accorded  thee, 
I  will  remit  the  punishment  which  the  slave 
deserves.' ' 

Another  proof  of  the  high  esteem  which 
singers  proficient  in  this  sort  of  chanting  en 
joyed  in  the  Orient  is  afforded  by  an  anecdote 
concerning  the  Caliph  Al-Mansour,  quoted  in 


96  KARMA 


Jalal'uddin's  history: — "Salem,  the  camel- 
driver,  once  drove  Al-Mansour's  camel,  sing 
ing  to  it ;  and  Al-Mansour  was  so  excited  with 
delight  that  he  nearly  fell  from  the  animal, 
and  he  rewarded  him  with  half  a  dirhem.  The 
man  said:  'I  drove  Hisham;  and  he  rewarded 
me  with  ten  thousand.'  "... 

It  is  beyond  doubt,  therefore,  that  during 
the  pre-Islamic  era  and  for  more  than  a  cen 
tury  afterward,  the  musicians  of  the  Arabians 
were  chiefly  slaves  and  generally  half-breeds 
or  blacks;*  that  these  dark  slaves  often  pos 
sessed  phenomenal  voices,  and  rose  to  high  dis 
tinction  by  their  skill  in  musical  improvisation. 
We  have  no  just  reason  to  doubt  that  Bilal 
may  have  been  a  really  wonderful  singer,  and 
that  the  traditions  regarding  his  vocal  pre-emi 
nence  may  have  been  founded  upon  fact.  It 
remains  to  be  considered  whether  he  really  es 
tablished  the  method  of  chanting  still  followed 
by  muezzins;  and  whether  he  improvised  the 
first  Adzan  music,  or  simply  sang  according  to 
the  teaching  of  his  master  Mahomet. 

*  See  Femmes  Arabes,  p.  467. 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  97 

First  of  all,  it  must  be  remembered  that  not 
withstanding  their  musical  sensibility,  music 
among  the  ancient  Arabs  scarcely  rose  above 
the  grade  of  vocal  improvisation, — sometimes 
resembling  the  modern  Corsican  voceri, — more 
generally  being  a  sort  of  psalmody,  "variegated 
and  embroidered"  according  to  the  caprice  of 
the  singer  and  the  effect  he  desired  to  pro 
duce, — the  utterance  of  each  word  being  ac 
companied  with  an  infinity  of  vocal  flourishes, 
floritures,  trills,  modulations  so  that  to  chant 
a  cantilene  of  only  three  stanzas  sometimes  re 
quired  as  many  hours  of  artistic  exertion.  This 
tendency  survives  among  Modern  Arabs — 
"What  traveler  in  Egypt,"  asks  Perron,  "has 
not  heard  these  two  words  sung  over  and  over 
again  for  half  an  hour  at  a  time,  or  even  more, 
-Laleily?—O  my  Night?"  It  is  possible, 
nevertheless,  that  even  in  the  time  of  Mahomet 
three  distinct  varieties  of  melody  were  recog 
nized  by  Arabian  musicians : 

First, — that  which  was  called  Straight:  a 
solemn  or  heroic  style,  suitable  either  for  the 


98  KARMA 


chants  of  warriors  or  the  songs  of  cameleers ; — 
Second, — That  which  was  called  Modulated 
or  Composite,  consisting  of  very  many  differ 
ent  movements  or  effects  of  voice  and  tones ; — 
Third, — That   which   was   known   as    The 
Light  or  Quick — "affecting  and  stirring  hearts, 
moving  and  troubling  even  serious  minds." 

As  a  slave,  and  therefore  at  times,  no  doubt, 
a  conductor  of  camels,  Bilal  may  have  been  ac 
customed  to  chant  in  the  measure  called 
Straight;  but  as  an  African  it  is  likely  that  the 
natural  musical  feeling  of  his  race  may  have 
found  utterance  at  other  hours  in  melody  of  a 
less  severe  description, — such  as  the  Arabs 
would  have  classed  as  Modulated.  He  should 
accordingly  have  been  well  able  to  improvise 
the  melody  of  the  Adzdn,  nor  is  it  unreasonable 
to  suppose  that  he  did.  Music  heard  in  dreams 
is  much  less  easily  retained  in  the  memory  than 
are  other  incidents  of  slumber;  the  reader  is 
doubtless  familiar  with  the  story  of  Tartini's 
Trille  del  Diavolo.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that 
the  melody  of  the  Adzdn  as  chanted  by  the 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  99 

stranger  in  Green  Raiment  could  have  been 
so  perfectly  memorized  by  the  dreamer  as  to  be 
communicated  to  another  person.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  not  at  all  incredible  that  Bilal, 
upon  being  taught  the  words,  sang  them  in  his 
own  wild  African  way,  and  that  Mahomet  ap 
proved  the  melody, — just  as  he  is  known  to 
have  approved  BilaTs  subsequent  addition  to 
the  revealed  Adzdn  of  the  words  "Prayer  is 
better  than  sleep."  Mahomet  would  have  been 
likely  to  approve  any  improvisation;  for  so 
highly  did  he  esteem  the  Abyssinian  that  he 
was  wont  to  ask  his  advice  in  matters  of  the 
greatest  importance,  and  that  although  two 
other  muezzins  were  subsequently  appointed, 
they  were  never  permitted  to  exercise  their 
calling  when  it  was  possible  for  Bilal  to  per 
form  that  duty.  On  the  whole  we  have  good 
reason  to  believe  that  the  melody  of  the  Call 
to  Prayer  was  really  improvised  by  Bilal  and 
that  he  chanted  it  with  those  singularities  of 
modulation  and  weirdness  of  feeling  still  char 
acteristic  of  African  melody. 


100  KARMA 


IV 

During  the  lifetime  of  the  Prophet,  Bilal 
continued  to  be  his  constant  attendant.  Im 
mediately  after  chanting  the  Call  to  Prayer, 
Bilal  would  always  arouse  Mahomet  with 
a  pious  ejaculation;  and  when  the  congre 
gation  had  assembled  within  the  Mosque,  all 
eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  African  who  stood 
in  the  front  row,  and  whose  genuflexions 
and  prostrations  were  studiously  imitated 
by  the  rest.  It  is  still  the  duty  of  the  muez 
zin  to  mingle  his  chant  with  that  of  the 
officiating  Imam,  to  whom  he  occupies  such  a 
relation  as  that  of  the  Christian  deacon  to  the 
priest  or  minister.  But  as  Islam  grew  in 
power,  BilaTs  position  greatly  increased  in  im 
portance,  and  far  weightier  duties  were  as 
signed  to  him: — in  addition  to  his  stewardship 
of  Mahomet's  household,  he  held  the  office  of 
treasurer  of  the  Prophet,  receiving  and  keep 
ing  in  trust  all  the  revenues  of  the  khalifate. 
When  Mahomet  made  his  triumphal  entry  into 
Mecca,  it  was  Bilal  who  received  the  keys  of 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  101 

the  Kabba;  and  it  was  Bilal  who  first  chanted 
the  Adzdn  from  the  summit  of  that  now  world- 
famous  temple.  It  was  Bilal  who  summoned 
Medina  to  prayer,  when  the  princes  came  from 
the  far-off  land  of  Hadramaut  "out  of  desire 
to  embrace  Islam."  It  was  Bilal  who  chanted 
the  Adzdn  when  the  cavaliers  of  Islam  camped 
in  the  desert  to  prepare  for  battle  with  the 
idolaters.  Some  sinister  traditions  of  his  sav 
age  zeal  after  the  battles  of  Bedr  and  Kheibar 
reveal  an  unrelenting  hatred  to  the  enemies  of 
his  benefactor;  but  these  passages  of  his  life 
need  not  be  here  detailed.  It  is  more  pleasant 
to  remember  that  when  Mahomet  made  his  last 
pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  the  faithful  black  walked 
at  his  side  to  shade  him  with  a  rude  screen 
from  the  noonday  sun.  Perhaps  during  that 
sultry  journey  over  the  glaring  sand  of  the 
Holy  Valley,  Bilal  might  have  found  himself 
treading  the  very  spot  where  he  and  his 
fellow-slaves  had  once  been  tortured  by  the 
Koreish.  .  .  . 

But   after   the   death    of   Mahomet   other 
muezzins  summoned  the  faithful  of  Medina  to 


102  KARMA 


prayer.  The  wonderful  voice  was  hushed;  for 
Bilal  made  known  his  resolve  never  to  sing  the 
Adzdn  again.  How  long  after  the  accession 
of  Abu  Bekr,  Bilal  remained  in  the  City  of  the 
Prophet  is  uncertain ;  but  we  know  that  he  was 
more  highly  honored  by  the  faithful  than  ever 
before,  and  that  he  possessed  influence  enough 
to  obtain  a  freeborn  Arab  wife  for  his  black 
brother — a  remarkable  condescension  upon  the 
part  of  a  race  whose  noblest  tribes  are  still 
distinguished  by  the  surname  El  H'rar,  or, 
"The  Thoroughbreds."  Even  after  the  death 
of  Abu  Bekr,  Bilal  seemed  to  have  exercised 
various  important  functions.  When  the  aus 
terely  just  Omar  resolved  to  disgrace  and  su 
persede  the  "Sword  of  God,"  it  was  Bilal  who 
removed  Khaled's  helmet,  and  bound  the  war 
rior's  hands  before  the  assembly  in  the  Mosque 
of  Hims,  exclaiming  in  his  puissant  voice: 
"Thus  and  thus  the  Commander  of  the  Faith 
ful  hath  said."  .  .  .  But  after  this  episode  we 
hear  little  of  Bilal  until  the  visit  of  Omar  to 
Syria.  Thither  the  old  man  had  followed  the 
army;  and,  having  been  granted  land  near  Da- 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  103 

mascus,  had  retired  altogether   from  public 
life. 

Most  of  the  Companions  were  dead;  Abu 
Bekr  and  Khaled  had  followed  their  Prophet 
to  Paradise,  together  with  a  great  host  of  those 
who  had  fought  the  first  battles  of  Islam;  and 
the  new  generation  was  not  like  unto  the  old. 
The  primitive  and  praiseworthy  simplicity  of 
the  Bedouin  tribes  had  almost  disappeared 
from  Arab  life; — strange  Asiatic  luxuries 
were  being  bought  and  sold  in  the  cities  of  the 
desert; — and  the  riches  of  Persia  poured  into 
Medina  like  a  veritable  inundation  of  gold, 
until  Omar  lifted  up  his  voice  and  wept,  say 
ing — "Verily  I  foresee  that  the  riches  which 
the  Lord  hath  bestowed  upon  us  will  become  a 
spring  of  worldliness  and  envy,  and  in  the  end, 
a  calamity  unto  my  people!"  The  faith  Bilal 
had  suffered  for,  the  faith  that  had  so  long 
been  unable  to  extend  itself  beyond  the  se 
cluded  quarter  Abu  Talib,  had  now  imposed 
its  supreme  law  upon  Arabia,  Syria,  Palestine, 
Persia;  and  ere  the  venerable  muezzin  should 
for  the  last  time  commend  his  soul  to  Him 


104  KARMA 

Who  never  sleeps,  the  lands  of  Africa  were  to 
be  added  to  the  conquests  of  Islam;  and  the 
Call  to  Prayer  was  soon  to  be  obeyed  by  na 
tions  of  worshipers,  from  the  confines  of  In 
dia  even  to  the  Atlantic  shore.  Already  horse 
men  of  the  Arabian  deserts  had  appeared  be 
fore  the  gates  of  Cabul;  and  a  son  of  Bilal 
might  have  lived  to  see  the  Empire  of  the 
Prophet's  successors  extending  over  the 
greater  portion  of  the  earth's  temperate  zone, 
— from  east  to  west  two  hundred  days'  jour 
ney.  How  must  the  fervent  faith  of  the  old 
man  have  been  strengthened  by  the  vast  spec 
tacle  of  Moslem  power  even  in  the  eighteenth 
year  of  the  Hegira ! 

After  the  death  of  Mahomet  Bilal  ceased  to 
sing  the  Adzdn; — the  voice  that  had  summoned 
the  Prophet  of  God  to  the  house  of  prayer 
ought  not,  he  piously  fancied,  to  be  heard  after 
the  departure  of  his  master.  Yet,  in  his  Syrian 
home,  how  often  must  he  not  have  been  prayed 
to  chant  the  words  as  he  first  chanted  them 
from  that  starlit  housetop  in  the  Holy  City, 
and  how  often  compelled  to  deny  the  petitions 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  105 

of  those  who  revered  him  as  a  saint  and  would 
perhaps  have  sacrificed  all  their  goods  to  have 
heard  him  but  once  lift  up  his  voice  in  musical 
prayer!  .  .  .  But  when  Omar  visited  Damas 
cus  the  chiefs  of  the  people  besought  him  that, 
as  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  he  should  ask 
Bilal  to  sing  the  Call  in  honor  of  the  event; 
and  the  old  man  consented  to  do  so  for  the  last 
time. 

The  religious  enthusiasm  of  the  youth  of 
Islam  in  those  early  years  of  the  faith  almost 
knew  no  bounds;  and  the  announcement  that 
Bilal  would  sing  the  Adzdn  must  have  en 
kindled  such  pious  delight,  such  feverish  ex 
altation  among  the  people  of  that  rose-scented 
city  as  we  could  find  no  parallel  for  in  Chris 
tian  history  save  in  the  period  of  the  Cru 
saders.  To  hear  Bilal  must  have  seemed  to 
many  as  sacred  a  privilege  as  to  have  heard 
the  voice  of  the  Prophet  himself, — the  proudest 
episode  of  a  lifetime, — the  one  incident  of  all 
others  to  be  related  in  long  after-years  to  chil 
dren  and  to  grandchildren.  Some  there  may 
have  been  whom  the  occasion  inspired  with 


106  KARMA 

feelings  no  loftier  than  curiosity ;  but  the  large 
majority  of  those  who  thronged  to  listen  in 
silent  expectancy  for  the  Allah-hu-akbar,  must 
have  experienced  emotions  too  deep  to  be  ever 
forgotten.  The  records  of  the  event,  at  least, 
fully  justify  this  belief; — for  when,  after  mo 
ments  of  tremulous  waiting,  the  grand  voice 
of  the  aged  African  rolled  out  amid  the  hush, 
— with  the  old  beloved  words, — the  old  famil 
iar  tones  still  deep  and  clear, — Omar  and  all 
those  about  him  wept  aloud,  and  tears  streamed 
down  every  warrior-face,  and  the  last  long 
notes  of  the  chant  were  lost  in  a  tempest  of 
sobbing. 

What  student  of  musical  history  would  not 
wish  to  know  how  Bilal  sang  that  last  Adzdn? 
— or  to  hear  the  words  chanted  precisely  as  the 
first  Muezzin  chanted  them?  Needless  to  say 
that  wish  is  absolutely  impossible  to  realize. 
Utterly  ignorant  of  the  art  of  preserving  mu 
sic  by  written  characters,  the  early  Arabian 
melodists  trusted  to  memory  alone  for  the  con 
servation  of  favorite  airs  or  methods  of  can- 
tillation;  and  we  shall  never  be  able  to  deter- 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  107 

mine  whether  BilaTs  improvisation  has  or  has 
not  been  wholly  lost.  Nothing  is  left  us  but 
the  privilege  of  a  theory.  Still,  the  theory  may 
afford  some  consolation  to  the  musical  roman 
ticists.  We  have  some  good  reason  to  believe 
that  melodies  may  be  preserved  by  memory 
alone  through  more  than  a  thousand  years; — 
there  is  even  some  ground  for  the  supposition 
that  certain  Hebrew  melodies  have  been  trans 
mitted  unchanged  through  generations  from 
the  days  of  Solomon  even  to  our  own.  Con 
servatism  of  religious  tradition  and  practice 
was  never  less  potent  among  the  Arabs  than 
among  the  Hebrews; — the  melody  of  the  first 
Adzdn  might  have  had  as  fair  a  chance  of  be 
ing  preserved  as  the  religious  melodies  of 
Israel.  It  is  at  least  barely  possible  that  in 
the  modern  Adzdn  chant,  some  fragment  of 
Bilal's  cantillation  may  be  retained, — all  the 
more  so  inasmuch  as  the  words  of  the  Call  to 
Prayer  have  not  been  changed.  Egypt,  above 
all  countries, — conquered  by  the  Moslem  ar 
mies  while  Bilal  was  yet  alive, — Egypt,  the 
Land  of  Changelessness,  might  have  retained 


108  KARMA 

the  traditional  memory  of  the  chant  as  first 
chanted  in  the  second  decade  of  the  Hegira, 
by  muezzins  who  had  heard  Bilal.  And  it 
would  indeed  be  pleasant  to  believe  that  Bilal 
himself  sang  the  Adzdn  somewhat  as  Villoteau 
heard  it  sung  in  modern  Egypt,  with  syllables 
of  the  name  of  God  wrought  into  arabesques 
of  tones  and  fragments  of  tones — so  strangely 
impressive  to  Occidental  ears: — 

The  singer  heard  by  Villoteau  sang  more 
artistically,  more  ornately,  than  that  muezzin 
whose  chant  has  been  preserved  for  us  by  Lane, 
and  may  be  found  in  his  Account  of  the  Mod 
ern  Egyptians.  Moreover,  as  a  music-loving 
friend  points  out  to  me,  the  cadences  of  the  sec 
ond  part  in  Lane's  version  all  end  on  the  second 
of  the  minor  scale —  <J~f"~  — instead  of  the 
tonic —  tfo— *—  — as  is  natural, — thus  giving 
an  impression  of  a  chant  suspended,  unfinished. 
One  might  prefer  to  believe  that  Bilal  sang 
after  the  manner  of  the  singer  heard  by  Villo 
teau, — with  all  those  Saracenic  floritures,  those 
fractions  of  tones  that  seem  so  nearly  allied  to 
the  weird  melodies  of  African  improvisation, 


THE     FIRST     MUEZZIN  109 

And  still  there  is  a  pathetic  and  beautiful  sol 
emnity  in  the  other  and  simpler  chant,  whose 
singular  cadences  seem  to  hold  a  pious  inti 
mation  of  the  suggestion  of  the  duty  of  wor 
ship,  eternally  beginning,  yet  never  terminat 
ing, — of  the  prayer  that  may  indeed  be  sus 
pended,  yet  never  finished, — of  the  adoration 
that  may  pause  but  never  end — not  even 
when  the  last  muezzin  shall  have  uttered  the 
last  call  to  prayer,  and  the  last  mosque  shall 
have  closed  its  gates  forever,  and  the  spider 
shall  weave  her  ghostly  tapestries  unmolested, 
within  the  deserted  sanctuary  of  the  Kaaba. 


CHINA  AND  THE  WESTERN 
WORLD 

A  RETROSPECT  AND  A  PROSPECT 


WHILE  crossing  any  of  the  great 
oceans  by  steamer,  and  watching 
the  dance  of  the  waves  that  lift  and 
swing  the  vessel,  you  sometimes  become  con 
scious  of  under  movements  much  larger  than 
those  of  the  visible  swells, — motion  of  surgings 
too  broad  to  be  perceived  from  deck.  Over 
these  unseen  billowings  the  ship  advances  by 
long  ascents  and  descents.  If  you  carefully 
watch  the  visible  waves,  you  will  find  that  each 
one  repeats  the  same  phenomenon  upon  a  very 
small  scale.  The  smooth  flanks  of  every  swell 
are  being  rapidly  traversed  by  currents  of  little 
waves,  or  ripples,  running  up  and  down.  This 
surface-rippling  is  complicated  to  such  a  degree 

that  it  can  be  accurately  noted  only  by  the 

HO 


CHINA   AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD    111 

help  of  instantaneous  photography.  But  it  is 
so  interesting  to  watch  that  if  you  once  begin 
to  observe  it,  you  will  presently  forget  all 
about  the  dimension  and  power  of  the  real 
wave,  the  huge  underswell  over  which  the 
foaming  and  the  rippling  play. 

In  the  study  of  those  great  events  which  are 
the  surges  of  contemporaneous  history,  that 
which  corresponds  to  the  currents  and  coun 
ter  currents  on  the  wave  surface  is  apt  to  oc 
cupy  public  attention  much  more  than  the 
deeper  under  motion.  All  the  confusion  of 
details  and  theories  furnished  by  official  re 
ports,  by  local  observation  and  feeling,  by  the 
enterprise  of  trained  newspaper  correspond 
ents,  may  have  special  value  for  some  future 
historian;  but,  like  the  ripples  and  the  foam 
on  the  flanks  of  a  wave,  it  covers  from  ordi 
nary  view  that  mightier  motion  which  really 
made  the  event.  Surges  which  break  thrones 
or  wreck  civilizations  are  seldom  considered  in 
themselves  at  the  moment  of  their  passing. 
The  sociologist  may  divine;  but  the  average 
reader  will  overlook  the  profounder  meaning 


112  KARMA 

of  the  movement,  because  his  attention  is  oc 
cupied  with  surface  aspects. 

The  foreign  press-comments  upon  the  war 
between  Japan  and  China  have  furnished 
many  illustrations  of  this  tendency  to  study 
the  ripples  of  an  event.  Probably  no  good 
history  of  that  war — no  history  based  upon 
familiarity  with  complete  records,  and  upon  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  the  social  and  political 
conditions  of  the  Far  East  anterior  to  1893 
— can  be  written  for  at  least  another  fifty 
years.  Even  the  causes  of  the  war  have  not 
yet  been  made  fully  known ;  we  have  only  offi 
cial  declarations  (which  leave  immense  scope 
for  imagination)  and  a  host  of  conflicting 
theories.  One  theory  is  that  Japan,  feeling 
the  necessity  of  opening  her  territories  to  for 
eign  trade,  and  fearing  that  China  might  take 
advantage  of  the  revision  of  the  treaties  to 
flood  the  country  with  Chinese  emigrants,  de 
clared  war  for  the  purpose  of  being  able  to 
exclude  China  from  the  privileges  to  be  ac 
corded  to  Western  nations.  Another  theory 
is  that  war  was  declared  because  ever  since 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WOULD     113 

1882,  when  Li-Hung-Chang  presented  his 
Emperor  with  a  memorial  about  plans  for  the 
"invasion  of  Japan,"  China  had  been  prepar 
ing  for  an  attack  upon  her  progressive  neigh 
bor.  A  third  theory  is  that  Japan  declared 
war  in  order  to  divert  national  feeling  into  less 
dangerous  channels  than  those  along  which  it 
had  begun  to  flow.  A  fourth  is  that  the  dec 
laration  of  war  was  designed  to  strengthen 
the  hands  of  certain  statesmen  by  creating  a 
military  revival.  A  fifth  is  that  Japan 
planned  the  conquest  of  China  merely' to  dis 
play  her  own  military  force.  And  there  have 
been  multitudes  of  other  theories,  some  of 
them  astonishingly  ingenious  and  incredible; 
but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  single  theory  yet 
offered  contains  the  truth.  Nevertheless,  it 
has  been  altogether  on  the  strength  of  such 
theories  that  Japan's  action  in  declaring  war 
has  been  criticised;  and  many  of  the  criticisms 
have  been  characterized  by  extraordinary  in 
justice.* 

•Especially  those  made  by  a  portion  of  the  London  press. 
How  little  the  real  condition  of  Japan  was  known  up  to  the 
time  of  the  war  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  a  leading 


114  KARMA 


Now,  the  critics  of  Japanese  motives  and 
morals  have  been  in  the  position  of  persons 
studying  only  the  currents  and  cross-currents 
upon  the  surface  of  a  swell.  For  the  ideas  of 
statesmen,  the  diplomacy  of  ministers,  the 
vague  rumors  suffered  to  escape  from  cabinet 
councils,  the  official  utterances,  the  official  cor 
respondence,  the  preparations,  the  proclama 
tions, — all  were  but  the  superficial  manifesta 
tions  of  the  fact.  The  fact  itself  was  that  the 
vast  tidal  wave  of  Occidental  civilization,  roll 
ing  round  the  world,  had  lifted  Japan  and 
hurled  her  against  China,  with  the  result  that 
the  Chinese  Empire  is  now  a  hopeless  wreck. 
The  deep,  irresistible,  underlying  forces  that 
set  the  war  in  motion  were  from  the  Occident; 
and  this  unquestionable  fact  once  recognized, 
all  criticisms  of  Japan  from  the  moral  stand 
point  become  absurdly  hypocritical.  Another 
indubitable  fact  worth  considering  is  that  only 
by  doing  what  no  Western  power  would  have 
liked  to  attempt  single-handed  has  Japan  ob- 

English  journal  declared  ten  thousand  Chinese  troops  could 
easily  conquer  Japan  because  of  the  absence  of  national  feeling 
in  the  latter  country  I 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WORLD     115 

tained  the  recognition  of  her  rights  and  of  her 
place  among  nations.  She  tore  away  that 
military  scarecrow  of  Western  manufacture 
which  China  had  purchased  at  so  great  a  cost, 
and  exposed  the  enormous  impotence  which  it 
had  so  long  shielded. 

II 

The  spectacle  of  the  power  of  Japan  and 
the  helplessness  of  China  startled  the  West 
ern  world  like  the  discovery  of  a  danger. 
It  was  evident  that  the  Japan  of  1894  could 
execute  without  difficulty  the  famous  menace 
uttered  by  Hideyoshi  in  the  fourteenth  cen 
tury:  ffl  mil  assemble  a  mighty  host,  and, 
invading  the  country  of  the  great  Ming,  I 
will  fill  with  the  hoar  frost  from  my  sword, 
the  whole  sky  over  the  four  hundred  pro 
vinces."  The  idea  of  a  China  dominated  by 
Japan  at  once  presented  itself  to  English 
journalists.  It  would  be  quite  possible,  they 
declared,  for  Japan  to  annex  China,  since  the 
subjugation  of  the  country  would  require  lit 
tle  more  than  the  overthrow  of  an  effete 


116  KARMA 

dynasty  and  the  suppression  of  a  few  feeble 
revolts.  Thus  China  had  been  conquered  by 
a  Tartar  tribe;  she  could  be  subdued  much 
more  quickly  by  the  perfectly  disciplined  arm 
ies  of  Japan.  The  people  would  soon  submit 
to  any  rulers  able  to  enforce  law  and  order, 
while  not  interfering  too  much  in  matters  of 
ancient  custom  and  belief.  Understanding 
the  Chinese  better  than  any  Aryan  conquerors 
could  do,  the  Japanese  would  be  able  to  make 
China  the  most  formidable  of  military  em 
pires  ;  and  they  might  even  undertake  to  realize 
the  ancient  Japanese  prediction  that  the  Sun's 
Succession  was  destined  to  rule  the  earth.  On 
this  subject  the  St.  James  Gazette  was  par 
ticularly  eloquent;  and  a  few  of  its  observa 
tions  are  worth  quoting,  as  showing  the  fancies 
excited  in  some  English  minds  by  the  first 
news  of  the  Japanese  triumphs : — 

"The  Japanese  dynasty  would  make  no 
startling  changes;  China  would  still  be  China, 
but  it  would  be  'Japanned  China.'  An  army 
and  a  navy,  an  organization  by  land  and  sea, 
would  grow  up  under  the  hand  of  the  Mikado. 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WORLD     117 

In  ten  or  fifteen  years'  time  a  Chino-Japanese 
government  would  have  an  army  of  two  mil 
lions  of  men  armed  with  European  weapons. 
In  twenty-five  years  the  available  force  might 
be  five  times  as  great,  and  the  first  couple  of 
millions  could  be  mobilized  as  quickly,  let  us 
say,  as  the  armies  of  Russia.  If  such  a  power 
chose  to  start  on  a  career  of  conquest,  what 
could  resist?  Nothing  at  present  in  Asia,  not 
even  Russia,  could  stand  against  it,  and  it 
might  knock  at  the  door  of  Europe.  The 
combined  Western  powers  might  resist  the 
first  shock,- — might  overcome  the  first  five  mil 
lions  of  Chinese  riflemen  and  Tartar  cavalry; 
but  behind  that  would  come  other  five  millions, 
army  after  army,  until  Europe  itself  was  ex 
hausted  and  its  resources  drained.  If  this 
seems  a  wild  dream,  consider  what  a  Japan- 
governed  China  would  be.  Think  what  the 
Chinese  are;  think  of  their  powers  of  silent  en 
durance  under  suffering  and  cruelty;  think  of 
their  frugality ;  think  of  their  patient  persever 
ance,  their  slow,  dogged  persistence,  their  reck 
lessness  of  life.  Fancy  this  people  ruled  by  a 


118  KARMA 


nation  of  born  organizers,  who,  half  allied  to 
them,  would  understand  their  temperament 
and  their  habits.  The  Oriental,  with  his 
power  of  retaining  health  under  conditions  un 
der  which  no  European  could  live,  with  his  sav 
age  daring  when  roused,  with  his  inborn  cun 
ning,  lacks  only  the  superior  knowledge  of 
civilization  to  be  the  equal  of  the  European  in 
warfare  as  well  as  in  industry.  In  England 
we  do  not  realize  that  in  a  Japanese  dynasty 
such  a  civilization  would  exist:  we  have  not 
yet  learned  to  look  upon  the  Mikado  as  a  civ 
ilized  monarch,  as  we  look  upon  the  Czar.  Yet 
such  he  is,  undoubtedly.  And  under  him  the 
dreams  of  the  supremacy  of  the  yellow  race 
in  Europe,  Asia,  and  even  Africa,  to  which 
Dr.  Pearson  and  others  have  given  expression, 
would  be  no  longer  mere  nightmares.  Instead 
of  speculating  as  to  whether  England  or  Ger 
many  or  Russia  is  to  be  the  next  world's  ruler, 
we  might  have  to  learn  that  Japan  was  on  its 
way  to  that  position." 

The  reference  to  Dr.  Pearson  shows,  as  we 
shall  see  hereafter,  that  his  views  had  not  been 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     119 

carefully  studied  by  the  writer.  But  the  pos 
sibilities  suggested  by  the  Gazette  may  be  said 
to  have  really  existed,  presupposing  non-inter 
ference  by  Western  powers.  Interference 
was,  of  course,  inevitable;  but  the  danger 
imagined  from  Japan  reappears  in  another 
form  as  a  result  of  the  interference.  China 
under  a  Russian  domination  would  be  quite  as 
dangerous  to  the  Occident  as  under  a  Japa 
nese  domination.  Russia  is  probably  a  better 
military  organizer  than  Japan,  and  would 
scarcely  be  more  scrupulous  in  the  exploita 
tion  of  Chinese  military  resources.  If  the 
Japanese  believe  that  their  dynasty  will  yet 
hold  universal  sway,  not  less  do  Russians  be 
lieve  that  the  dominion  of  their  Czar  is  to 
spread  over  the  whole  world.  For  the  West 
ern  powers  to  allow  Russia  to  subjugate 
China  would  be  even  more  dangerous  than  to 
suffer  Japan  to  rule  it.  But  while  it  would 
have  been  easy  to  prevent  the  annexation  of 
China  by  Japan,  it  will  not  be  easy  to  prevent 
the  same  thing  from  being  done  by  Russia. 
A  host  of  unpleasant  political  problems  have 


120  KARMA 


thus  been  brought  into  existence  by  the  late 
war.  What  is  to  be  done  with  China,  now 
practically  at  the  mercy  of  Russia?  Is  her 
vast  territory*  to  be  divided  among  several 
Western  powers,  as  Russia  desires?  Is  her 
empire  to  be  repropped  and  maintained,  like 
that  of  Turkey,  so  as  to  preserve  peace?  No 
body  can  answer  such  questions  just  now. 
Nothing  is  even  tolerably  certain  except  that 
China  must  yield  to  Western  pressure,  and 
that  she  will  be  industrially  exploited  to  the  ut 
termost,  sooner  or  later.  Meanwhile,  she  re 
mains  a  source  of  peril, — the  possible  cause  of 
a  tremendous  conflict. 

Momentous  as  all  this  may  seem,  the  new 
political  questions  stirred  up  by  the  fall  of 
China  from  her  position  as  the  greatest  of  Far- 
Eastern  nations  are  really  surface  questions. 
The  most  serious  problem  created  by  the  late 
war  is  much  broader  and  deeper.  No  inter 
national  war  or  any  other  possible  happening 
is  likely  to  prevent  the  domination  of  China  by 
some  form  of  Occidental  civilization ;  and  when 


CHINA   AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     121 

this  becomes  an  accomplished  fact  we  shall  be 
face  to  face  with  the  real  danger  of  which  Dr. 
Pearson's  book  was  the  prediction.  All  fu 
ture  civilization  may  be  affected  by  such  dom 
ination  ;  and  even  the  fate  of  the  Western  races 
may  be  decided  by  it.  The  great.  Chinese  puz 
zle  to  come  is  neither  political  nor  military;  it 
cannot  be  solved  either  by  statecraft  or  by  ar 
mies;  it  can  be  decided  only  by  the  operation 
of  natural  laws,  among  which  that  of  physio 
logical  economy  will  probably  be  the  chief. 
But  just  as  English  critics  of  the  late  war  ig 
nored  the  real  cause  of  that  war,  the  huge  west 
ward  surge  of  forces  that  compelled  it,  so  do 
they  now  ignore  the  fact  that  the  same  war  has 
set  in  motion  forces  of  another  order  which 
may  change  the  whole  future  history  of  man 
kind. 

in 

The  Far-Eastern  question  of  most  impor 
tance  was  first  offered  for  English  socio 
logical  consideration  in  Dr.  Pearson's  won 
derful  volume,  National  Life  and  Character, 


122  KARMA 


published  about  three  years  ago.*  While 
reading  a  number  of  criticisms  upon  it,  I 
was  struck  by  the  fact  that  a  majority  of  the 
reviewers  had  failed  to  notice  the  most  impor 
tant  portions  of  the  argument.  The  rude  shock 
given  by  the  book  to  the  Western  pride  of 
race,  to  the  English  sense  of  stability  in  espe 
cial,  to  that  absolute  self-confidence  which  con 
stantly  impels  us  to  the  extension  of  territory, 
the  creation  of  new  colonies,  the  development 
of  new  resources  reached  by  force,  without  any 
suspicion  that  all  this  aggrandizement  may 
bring  its  own  penalty,  provoked  a  state  of  mind 
unfavorable  to  impartial  reflection.  The  idea 
that  the  white  races  and  their  civilization  might 
perish,  in  competition  with  a  race  and  a  civ 
ilization  long  regarded  as  semi-barbarous, 
needed  in  England  some  philosophical  pa 
tience  to  examine.  Abroad  the  conditions 
were  otherwise.  Far-seeing  men,  who  had 
passed  the  better  part  of  their  lives  in  China, 

*By  Macmillan  &  Co.  In  the  Revue  Bleue  and  other 
French  periodicals  some  phases  of  the  question  had  been  pre 
viously  treated  by  able  writers,  but  in  so  different  a  manner 
that  the  whole  of  Dr.  Pearson's  work  appears  as  a  totally  orig 
inal  presentation  of  the  subject. 


CHINA   AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     123 

found  nothing  atrocious  in  Dr.  Pearson's  book. 
It  only  expressed,  with  uncommon  vigor  and 
breadth  of  argument,  ideas  which  their  own 
long  experience  in  the  Far  East  had  slowly 
forced  upon  them.  But  of  such  ideas,  it  was 
the  one  that  most  impressed  the  Englishman 
in  China  which  least  impressed  the  Englishman 
in  London.  A  partial  reason  may  have  been 
that  Dr.  Pearson's  arguments  in  1893  ap 
peared  to  deal  with  contingencies  incalculably 
remote.  But  what  seemed  extremely  remote 
in  1893  has  ceased  to  seem  remote  since  the 
victories  of  Japan.  The  fate  of  China  as  an 
empire  can  scarcely  now  be  called  a  matter 
of  doubt,  although  the  methods  by  which  it  is 
to  be  decided  will  continue  to  afford  food  for 
political  speculation.  China  must  pass  under 
the  domination  of  Western  civilization;  and 
this  simple  fact  will  create  the  danger  to  which 
Dr.  Pearson  called  attention. 

It  is  true  that  the  author  of  National  Life 
and  Character  did  consider  the  possibility  of 
a  military  awakening  of  China ;  but  he  also  ex 
pressed  his  belief  that  it  was  the  least  likely 


124  KARMA 


of  events,  and  could  hardly  be  brought  about 
except  through  the  prior  conversion  of  all 
China  to  the  warrior-creed  of  Islam.  Recent 
events  have  proved  the  soundness  of  this  be 
lief;  for  the  war  exposed  a  condition  of  offi 
cial  cowardice  and  corruption  worse  than  had 
ever  been  imagined, — a  condition  which  could 
not  fail  to  paralyze  any  attempt  to  rouse  the 
race  out  of  lethargy.  With  the  close  of  the 
campaign  the  world  felt  convinced  that  no 
military  regeneration  of  China  was  possible 
under  the  present  dynasty.  Spasmodic  at 
tempts  at  revolution  followed;  but  some  of 
these  exhausted  themselves  in  the  murder  of 
a  few  foreign  missionaries  and  in  foolish  at 
tacks  upon  mission  stations,  with  the  usual  con 
sequences  of  Christian  retaliation, — execu 
tions  and  big  indemnities;  and  other  upris 
ings,  even  in  the  Mohammedan  districts,  have 
failed  to  accomplish  anything  beyond  local 
disorder.,  Nothing  like  a  general  revolution 
now  appears  possible.  Without  it  the  reign 
ing  dynasty  cannot  be  overthrown  except  by 
foreign  power;  and  under  that  dynasty  there 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WORLD     125 

is  not  even  the  ghost  of  a  chance  for  military 
reforms.  Indeed,  it  is  doubtful  if  the  West 
ern  powers  would  now  permit  China  to  make 
herself  as  strong  as  she  was  imagined  to  be 
only  two  years  ago.  In  her  present  state  she 
will  have  to  obey  those  powers.  She  will  have 
to  submit  to  their  discipline  within  her  own 
borders,  but  not  to  such  discipline  as  would 
enable  her  to  create  formidable  armies.  Never 
theless,  it  is  just  that  kind  of  discipline  which 
she  will  have  to  learn  that  is  most  likely  to 
make  her  dangerous.  The  future  danger  from 
China  will  be  industrial,  and  mil  begin  with 
the  time  that  she  passes  under  Occidental 
domination. 

TV 

For  the  benefit  of  those  who  have  not  read 
his  book,  it  may  be  well  to  reproduce  some  of 
Dr.  Pearson's  opinions  about  this  peril,  and 
also  to  say  a  few  words  about  the  delusion,  or 
superstition,  which  opposes  them.  This  de 
lusion  is  that  all  weaker  peoples  are  destined  to 
make  way  for  the  great  colonizing  white  races, 


126  KARMA 


leaving  the  latter  sole  masters  of  the  habitable 
world.  This  flattering  belief  is  without  any 
better  foundation  in  fact  than  the  extermina 
tion  of  some  nomadic  and  some  savage  peoples 
of  a  very  low  order  of  capacity.  Such  ex 
tinctions  have  been  comparatively  recent,  and 
for  that  reason  undue  importance  may  have 
been  attached  to  them.  Older  history  pre 
sents  us  with  facts  of  a  totally  different  char 
acter,  with  numerous  instances  of  the  subjuga 
tion  of  the  civilized  by  the  savage,  and  of  the 
destruction  of  a  civilization  by  barbarian  force. 
It  would  also  be  well  to  remember  that  the 
most  advanced  of  existing  races  is  very  far 
from  being  the  highest  race  that  has  ever  ex 
isted.  One  race,  at  least,  has  disappeared 
which  was  immensely  superior,  both  physically 
and  morally,  to  the  English  people  of  to-day. 
I  quote  from  Francis  Galton:  "The  average 
ability  of  the  Athenian  race  was,  on  the  low 
est  possible  estimate,  nearly  two  grades  higher 
than  our  own, — that  is,  about  as  much  as  the 
ability  of  our  race  is  above  that  of  the  African 
negro.  This  estimate,  which  may  seem  pro- 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     127 

digious  to  some,  is  confirmed  by  the  quick  in 
telligence  and  high  culture  of  the  Athenian 
commonalty,  before  whom  literary  works  were 
recited,  and  works  of  art  exhibited,  of  a  far 
more  severe  character  than  could  possibly  be 
appreciated  by  the  average  of  our  age, — the 
caliber  of  whose  intellect  is  easily  gauged  by 
a  glance  at  the  contents  of  a  railway  book 
stall.  ...  If  we  could  raise  the  average  stand 
ard  of  our  own  race  only  one  grade,  what  vast 
changes  would  be  produced!  .  .  .  The  num 
ber  of  men  of  natural  gifts  equal  to  those  of 
the  eminent  men  of  the  present  day  would  be 
increased  tenfold  [2433  to  a  million,  instead 
of  233]."  Mr.  Galton  goes  on  to  prove  that, 
could  we  raise  the  average  ability  to  the  Athe 
nian  level,  or  two  grades  higher,  the  result 
would  be  that  for  every  six  men  of  extraordi 
nary  ability  whom  England  can  now  produce, 
she  would  then  produce  thirteen  hundred  and 
fifty-five.*  Perhaps  so  gifted  a  race  will  never 
again  appear  upon  earth.  Yet  it  has  utterly 

*  Hereditary  Genius,  "On  the  Comparative  Worth  of  Dif 
ferent  Races,"  pages  329-332,  edition  of  1892.  Concerning  the 
physical  development  of  the  Greek  race,  I  would  recommend 


128  KARMA 


disappeared.  Probably  the  remark  will  be 
made  that  its  disappearance  was  due  chiefly, 
as  Mr.  Galton  seems  to  believe,  to  moral  lax 
ity.  Well,  the  very  title  of  Dr.  Pearson's 
book  ought  to  have  indicated  to  those  who  re 
viewed  it  superficially  that  he  was  consider 
ing  the  probable  results  of  moral  laxity  upon 
modern  civilization.  One  of  our  dangers  is  to 
be  sought  in  the  ever-increasing  greed  of  pleas 
ure  and  the  decay  of  character.  The  mental 
and  the  moral  capacities  of  the  so-called  higher 
races  are  showing,  Dr.  Pearson  believed,  those 
signs  of  exhaustion  which  would  indicate  that 
the  maximum  development  of  our  civilization 
has  almost  been  reached.  The  fact  is  certainly 
significant  that  the  most  naturally  gifted  of 
all  European  races,  the  French,  is  showing  it 
self,  like  the  Athenian  race,  relatively  though 
not  normally  infertile.  There  are  doubtless 
other  causes  for  this,  such  as  those  considered 

the  reader  to  glance  at  Taine's  extraordinary  grouping  of  evi 
dence  bearing  on  the  question,  in  his  Philosophic  de  I' Art  and 
in  L'Idtal  dans  I' Art.  Mr.  Mahaffy  has  written  a  book  to 
prove  the  English  boy  superior  to  the  Greek  boy;  but  his  ar 
gument  involves  the  denial  of  facts  accepted  by  equally  good 
authority. 


CHINA   AND   THE   WESTERN   WOULD     129 

by  Mr.  Spencer;*  but  the  decay  of  charac 
ter  can  scarcely  be  the  least.  For  all  Occi 
dental  civilization  this  will  be  one  of  the  perils 
from  within.  The  peril  from  without  will  be 
the  industrial  competition  of  the  Far  East. 

Before  we  consider  Dr.  Pearson's  views,  an 
other  remark  may  be  offered  about  the  exag 
gerated  belief  of  the  Western  races  in  their 
own  unparalleled  superiority.  Monstrous  as 
may  seem  to  some  the  fancy  that  a  non-Chris 
tian  Oriental  race  may  be  able  to  dominate 
Christendom  in  the  future,  we  have  to  face 
the  fact  that  a  non-Christian  and  an  Oriental 
people  financially  rule  Western  civilization  to 
day.  The  world's  finances  are  practically  in 
the  hands  of  a  race  persecuted  by  Christianity 
for  thirteen  centuries, — a  race  undoubtedly 
modified  in  the  Occident  by  large  interfusion 
of  Western  blood,  but  nevertheless  markedly 
preserving  its  Oriental  and  unmistakable  char 
acteristics.  And  the  recent  anti-Semitic 
manifestations  in  Europe  represent  the  mod 
ern  acknowledgment  of  Aryan  inability  to  cope 

*  Principles  of  Biology,  vol.  ii.  chap.  xii. 


130  KARMA 


with  particular  powers  possessed  by  that  race. 
I  might  even  cite  from  a  remarkable  German 
study,  published  about  ten  years  ago,  and  writ 
ten  to  prove  that  whenever  the  percentage  of 
Hebrews  in  a  Gentile  population  begins  to 
exceed  a  certain  small  figure,  then  "life  be 
comes  intolerable  for  the  Gentiles."  But  I 
wish  to  call  attention  to  general  rather  than  to 
special  superiority.  The  intellectual  power  of 
the  Jew  is  by  no  means  limited  to  business. 
The  average  of  Jewish  ability  surpasses  that 
of  the  so-termed  Aryan  in  a  far  greater  vari 
ety  of  directions  than  is  commonly  known. 
Out  of  100,000  Western  celebrities,  the  pro 
portion  of  Jews  to  Europeans  in  philology,  for 
example,  is  123  to  13;  in  music,  it  is  71  to  11; 
in  medicine,  it  is  49  to  31 ;  in  natural  science, 
it  is  25  to  22.*  In  departments  of  genius  as 
diverse  as  those  of  chess-playing  and  acting, 
the  Jewish  superiority  is  also  powerfully 
marked.  It  has  been  said  that  the  Jewish  ca 
pacity  was  developed  by  Christian  persecu 
tion;  but,  not  to  mention  the  fact  that  such 

*  I  take  the  figures  accepted  by  Lombroso.    See  his  Man  of 
Genius. 


CHINA   AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     131 

persecution  selected  its  victims  rather  from  the 
best  than  from  the  worst  of  a  Jewish  popula 
tion,  this  explanation  would  place  within  com 
paratively  recent  times  the  evolution  of  men 
tal  powers  which  have  distinguished  the  race 
from  the  most  ancient  times.  Jewish  capacity 
was  rather  the  cause  than  the  consequence  of 
persecution.  Ages  before  Christianity  (as 
might  be  inferred  even  from  Genesis  and  from 
Exodus,  or  from  the  book  of  Esther)  the  race 
had  been  hated  and  persecuted  because  of  its 
capacity.  That  capacity  was  restrained  by 
special  legal  disabilities  in  Rome.  It  pro 
voked  murder  and  pillage  even  under  the  tol 
erant  rule  of  the  Arabs  in  Spain;*  and  the  at 
titude  of  Mohammedan  races  toward  the  Jews 
in  Africa  and  in  Asia  has  been,  on  the  whole, 
scarcely  more  tolerant  than  that  of  Christian 
nations. 

So  much  for  the  fancied  mental  supremacy 
of  the  Western  nations.  The  delusion  that 
other  races  are  providentially  destined  to  dis 
appear  before  the  so-called  Aryan,  has  been 

*  For  particulars   of  the  rising  against  the  Jews  in  Spain 
under  the  Arabs,  see  Dozy's  History. 


132  KARMA 

attacked  by  Dr.  Pearson  with  a  vast  array  of 
systematized  facts  and  observations,  including 
the  results  of  studies  made  by  himself  in  many 
parts  of  the  world.  Although  it  is  true  that 
some  races,  unable  to  bear  the  discipline  of 
our  civilization,  have  already  disappeared,  or 
are  quickly  disappearing, — such  as  the  Tas- 
manian  and  Australian  aborigines,  certain 
Maori  peoples,  and  North  American  Indian 
tribes, — Dr.  Pearson  has  shown  that  these  ac 
complished  or  threatened  extinctions  illustrate 
only  the  exceptions  to  the  general  rule  of  the 
effect  of  Western  expansion  upon  alien  races. 
Under  our  social  system  the  condition  of  be 
ing  able  to  live  is  to  work  hard,  to  work  stead 
ily,  and  to  work  intelligently.  Those  unable 
to  do  this  either  perish  at  once,  or  sink  into 
the  slough  of  vice  and  crime  which  underlies 
all  our  civilization,  or  else  find  themselves  re 
duced  to  a  condition  of  misery  worse  than  any 
normal  experiences  of  savage  life.  But  there 
are  many  inferior  races,  both  savage  and  semi- 
savage,  which  thrive  under  the  discipline  of 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     133 

the  higher  races,  and  so  multiply  after  the  in 
troduction  of  Occidental  order  into  their  ter 
ritory  that  their  multiplication  itself  becomes 
an  effective  check  upon  the  further  growth  of 
the  dominating  race.  Thus  the  Kaffir  has  mul 
tiplied  under  British  protection,  and  the  Java 
nese  under  Dutch.  Thus  the  populations  of 
the  Straits  Settlements  and  of  British  India 
steadily  increase.  The  history  of  the  various 
English,  French,  and  Dutch  colonies  yields 
wide  evidence  that  many  weaker  races,  far 
from  vanishing  before  the  white,  greatly  in 
crease  in  number.  Such  increase  necessarily 
sets  a  limit  to  white  multiplication  in  those 
regions, — seeing  that  all  labor  needed  can  be 
supplied  by  natives  at  rates  for  which  no  white 
men  would  work,  even  supposing  the  climate 
were  in  all  cases  favorable  to  Europeans. 

Climate,  however,  is  another  question  in  this 
relation.  Climate  also  sets  a  limit — probably 
a  perpetual  limit — to  the  expansion  of  the 
higher  races.  The  tropics,  apparently,  can 
never  become  their  habitat.  In  what  has  been 


134  KARMA 


termed  the  "pyrogenic  region"  the  white  races 
cannot  maintain  themselves  without  the  aid  of 
other  races.  Their  domination  now,  as  in  the 
past,  we  find  to  depend  upon  constant  supplies 
of  fresh  strength  from  a  colder  region,  and 
their  numbers  have  never  increased  beyond  an 
insignificant  figure.  The  West  Indies,  from 
which  the  white  race  is  slowly  but  surely  van 
ishing,  furnish  a  strong  example:  the  estates 
are  passing  into  the  hands  of  the  former  slave 
race.  Tropical  Africa  may  be  held,  but 
never  can  be  peopled  by  Europeans.  Left  to 
themselves  for  a  few  generations,  the  English 
in  Hindustan  would  vanish  utterly,  like  those 
Greek  conquerors  who,  after  Alexander,  ruled 
Indian  kingdoms.  The  state  of  Spanish  and 
Portuguese  tropical  colonies  in  both  hemi 
spheres  tells  eloquently  the  story  of  the  limits 
set  by  nature  to  white  expansion.* 

In  the  temperate  zone,  where  the  Western 

*Long  before  Dr.  Pearson,  Herbert  Spencer  had  noticed 
these  limits.  He  had  also  observed,  "With  social  organisms, 
as  with  individual  organisms,  the  evolution  of  superior  types 
does  not  entail  the  extinction  of  all  inferior  ones."  (Sociol 
ogy,  vol.  ii.)  But  Mr.  Spencer  has  never  given  detailed  atten 
tion  to  the  special  problems  first  studied  in  detail  by  the  author 
of  National  Life  and  Character. 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WORLD     135 

races  come  into  contact  with  races  indubitably 
civilized,  though  in  some  respects  less  highly 
organized,  the  former  can  only  temporarily 
gain  ground,  for  the  white  races  can  be  most 
effectually  underlived  by  peoples  of  nearly 
equal  intelligence  in  production  and  in  com 
merce.     The   Occidentals   may   conquer   and 
rule,  but  they  have  even  less  chance  of  multi 
plying  at  the  expense  of  Chinese  than  of  mul 
tiplying  at  the  expense  of  Hindus.     All  the 
great  Oriental  races  have  proved  themselves 
able  to  learn  enough  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
West  to  more  than  hold  their  own  in  matters 
of  manufacture  and  trade.     Under  Occiden 
tal  government  a  civilized  Oriental  race  not 
only  grows,  but  grows  rich.     In  the  matter  of 
labor,  whether  common  or  skilled,  the  white 
artisan  has  no  chance  to  compete  with  Orien 
tals  upon  their  own  soil,  or — except  in  the 
manufactures  wholly  depending  upon  the  ap 
plied  sciences — upon  any  other  soil.     White 
labor  has  never  been  able  to  compete  on  equal 
terms  with  Oriental  labor. 


136  KARMA 


Those  confessions,  which  all  European  na 
tions  have  made  at  various  epochs  of  their 
history, — and  which  some  have  made  in  our 
own  time, — of  inability  to  cope  with  the  Jewish 
people  upon  equal  terms  have  other  sociological 
meanings  than  such  as  might  be  implied  by 
difference  in  average  mental  ability.  They 
must  also  be  considered  as  suggestive  of  the 
incapacity  of  societies  not  yet  emerged  from 
the  militant  stage  to  compete  with  a  people 
essentially  commercial  from  an  epoch  long  an 
terior  to  the  foundation  of  those  societies.  It 
is  noteworthy  that  just  in  proportion  as  the 
militant  form  of  society  has  changed  toward 
the  industrial,  anti-Semitic  feeling  has  dimin 
ished,  whereas  it  is  strengthened  again  by  any 
reverse  social  tendency.  The  most  essentially 
industrial  nations,  America  and  England,  to 
day  give  no  exhibitions  of  anti-Semitic  feeling; 
but  with  the  military  expansion  of  other  socie 
ties  or  the  marked  return  to  military  forms 
we  find  the  sentiment  reviving.  Russia,  Ger- 


CHINA  AND  THE   WESTERN   WORLD     137 

many,  and  even  republican  France  have  given 
manifestations  of  it;  those  of  Russia  proving 
absolutely  medieval  and  ferocious. 

Now,  we  must  remember,  while  considering 
the  question  of  future  race  competition  in  the 
Far  East,  that  the  evolution  of  Occidental  civ 
ilization  from  the  militant  toward  the  indus 
trial  state  is  yet  far  from  complete,  as  its  pro 
pensities  to  aggression  bear  witness ;  while  the 
Chinese,  however  much  below  our  level  in 
certain  phases  of  development,  are  a  people 
that  reached  the  industrial  type  of  society 
thousands  of  years  ago. 

In  Dr.  Pearson's  book  it  is  plainly  stated 
that  the  industrial  competition  of  China  would 
be  incomparably  more  dangerous  to  Western 
civilization  than  that  of  any  other  nation,  not 
only  because  of  its  multiformity,  but  also  be 
cause  it  is  a  competition  to  which  nature  has 
set  no  climatic  limits.  Thrifty  and  patient 
and  cunning  as  Jews,  the  Chinese  can  ac 
commodate  themselves  to  any  climate  and  to 
any  environment.  They  can  live  in  Java  or 
in  Siberia,  in  Borneo  or  in  Thibet.  Unlike 


138  KARMA 

the  modern  Jews,  however,  they  are  more  to 
be  feared  in  industry  than  in  commerce;  for 
there  is  scarcely  any  form  of  manual  skilled 
labor  at  which  they  are  not  capable  of  killing 
white  competition.  Their  history  in  Aus 
tralia  has  proved  this  fact.  But  in  commerce 
also  they  are  able  to  hold  their  own  against  the 
cleverest  merchants  of  other  races.  They  are 
adepts  at  combination,  excellent  financiers, 
shrewd  and  daring  speculators.  Though  not 
yet  rivals  of  Europeans  in  that  class  of  pro 
duction  dependent  upon  the  application  of 
modern  science  to  manufacture,  they  have 
given  proof  of  ability  to  master  that  science 
whenever  the  study  can  profit  them.  They 
are  learning  thoroughly  the  commercial  con 
ditions  of  every  country  which  they  visit;  and 
though  the  history  of  their  emigration  began 
within  recent  times,  they  are  already  to  be 
found  in  almost  every  part  of  the  world. 
They  have  swarmed  along  the  coasts  of  North 
and  South  America,  and  found  their  way  to 
the  West  Indies.  A  big  part  of  the  East 


CHINA  AND  THE   WESTERN   WORLD     139 

knows  them.  They  do  business  in  the  cities 
of  India;  they  created  Singapore.  They 
have  multiplied  in  the  Malay  peninsula,  in 
Sumatra,  in  Hawaii,  in  numbers  of  islands. 
They  are  said  to  have  provoked,  by  threaten 
ing  the  existence  of  Dutch  rule  in  Java,  the 
massacre  in  which  nine  thousand  of  their  race 
perished.  Both  Australia  and  the  United 
States  have  found  it  necessary  to  legis 
late  against  their  immigration;  and  the  Chi 
nese  ability  to  supplant  the  Malay  races  in 
the  Eastern  tropics  has  produced  astonishing 
results  within  the  memory  of  men  now  living. 
What  America  and  Australia  have  been 
obliged  to  protect  themselves  from,  all  Eu 
rope  may  have  cause  to  fear  before  the  close 
of  the  next  century.  Once  China  has  been 
penetrated  by  the  forces  of  Western  civiliza 
tion,  her  population  will  begin  to  display  new 
activities,  and  to  expand  in  all  possible  di 
rections.  Chinese  competition  will  have  to 
be  faced,  probably,  very  much  sooner  than 
had  been  expected. 


140  KARMA 

VI 

A  very  significant  fact  bearing  upon  this 
problem  has  been  furnished  by  the  influence 
of  Occidental  civilization  in  Japan. 

Although  the  author  who  declared  the 
Western  type  of  society  to  be,  in  many  re 
spects,  "one  of  the  most  horrible  that  has  ever 
existed  in  the  world's  history"  was  certainly 
more  than  half  right;  although  it  is  true  that 
we  see  "boundless  luxury  and  self-indulgence 
at  one  end  of  the  scale,  and  at  the  other  a  con 
dition  of  life  as  cruel  as  that  of  a  Roman 
slave,  and  more  degraded  than  that  of  a 
South-Sea  islander;"  although  our  civilization 
be  one  which  opens  the  gate  of  fortune  to 
aggressive  cunning,  and  closes  it  as  long  as 
possible  against  the  highest  qualities  of  char 
acter  and  of  intellect, — nevertheless  that  civ 
ilization  enormously  multiplies  the  chances  for 
energy,  for  talent,  for  practical  abilities  of 
almost  every  description.  While  crushing 
and  destroying  in  one  direction,  it  opens  a 
hundred  ways  for  escape  in  another.  Though 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     141 

the  feeble,  the  stupid,  and  the  vicious  are 
brayed  alive,  the  strong,  the  clever,  and  the 
self-controlled  are  not  only  aided,  but  are 
compelled  to  better  themselves.  The  condition 
of  success  is  not  merely  that  effort  shall  be 
constant,  but  also  that  the  force  of  the  effort 
itself  shall  be  constantly  increased;  and  those 
able  to  fulfill  that  condition  without  a  mental 
or  a  physical  break-down  are  tolerably  certain 
to  win  at  last  what  they  wish, — perhaps  even 
more  than  they  wish.  While  the  effort  ex 
acted  is  large,  the  return  is,  in  the  majority  of 
normal  cases,  more  than  proportional.  Life 
must  be  lived  upon  a  bigger  scale  than  in  the 
past;  but  the  means  so  to  live  can  be  earned 
by  the  more  vigorous.  Although,  by  the  law 
of  antagonism  between  individuation  and  gen 
esis,  the  higher  races  ought  to  be  the  less  fer 
tile  races,  other  conditions  being  equal,  they 
are  not  so,  having  been  able  to  create  for 
themselves  conditions,  unknown  in  previous 
eras,  and  opportunities  still  undreamed  of  by 
races  accustomed  to  simple  natural  living. 
Hence  the  phenomenon  that  a  non-Aryan 


142  KARMA 


race,  able  and  willing  to  adopt  Western  civil 
ization,  or  even  to  submit  contentedly  to  its 
discipline,  will  begin  to  multiply  more  rapidly 
under  the  new  conditions,  even  while  those 
conditions  entail  forms  of  suffering  previ 
ously  unknown.  Up  to  a  certain  stage  of  de 
velopment  the  opportunities  of  life  will  be 
increased  even  more  than  the  difficulties;  for 
previous  resources  will  be  enlarged,  and  new 
ones  found  and  developed,  while  countless 
means  of  conquering  natural  obstacles  will  be 
furnished  by  scientific  knowledge  to  those  ca 
pable  of  using  them. 

Penetrated  by  the  influences  of  Western 
civilization,  the  population  of  Japan  began 
almost  simultaneously  to  expand.  Within 
twenty-two  years  it  has  increased  more  than 
twenty-five  per  cent.  In  the  year  1872  it  was 
33,110,825.  In  1892  it  was  41,388,313.  It  is 
now  over  42,000,000.  And  this  increase  has 
been  in  despite  of  repeated  epidemics,  and 
great  losses  of  life  due  to  floods  and  earth 
quakes.  Improved  sanitation,  enforcement  of 
hygienic  laws,  attention  given  to  drainage  and 


CHINA   AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     143 

to  systems  of  water  supply  have  certainly 
helped  the  increase,  but  could  not  alone  ex 
plain  it.  The  explanation  is  to  be  sought- 
rather  in  the  greatly  widened  opportunities  of 
life  furnished  by  the  sudden  development  of 
the  country.  During  the  same  period  the  in 
crease  in  the  total  volume  of  the  export  and 
import  trade  has  been  534  per  cent.  The  total 
of  customs  duties  has  more  than  quadrupled. 
Wages  are  said  to  have  risen  37  per  cent.* 
Among  facts  showing  agricultural  develop 
ment  is  the  increase  in  the  area  of  cultivated 
land.  That  of  land  under  wheat  and  barley 
is  put  at  58.5  per  cent,  and  of  land  under  rice 
at  8.4.  Improved  methods  of  agriculture  may 
help  to  account  for  the  increase  of  rice  pro 
duction  by  25.5  per  cent  during  the  last  fifteen 
years  alone.  In  the  same  period  of  fifteen 
years,  the  increase  in  silk  production  has  been 
300.2  per  cent,  and  in  that  of  tea  240.3.  In 
the  year  1883  there  were  84  manufactories 

*  Probably  at  the  open  ports  only.  I  take  these  figures  from 
the  Japan  Daily  Mail,  which  republished  them  from  the  Kobw- 
minno-Tomo.  I  personally  know,  however,  that  in  some  pro 
vinces  there  has  been  yet  practically  no  rise  in  wages  worth 
mentioning.  The  cost  of  skilled  labor  in  the  open  ports  has 
increased  greatly. 


144  KARMA 

using  steam  or  hydraulic  power.  In  the  year 
1893  there  were  1163;  in  cotton-spinning  the 
development  has  been  enormous, — 1014  per 
cent  in  a  single  decade. 

I  think  that  the  myriad  new  opportunities 
to  earn  a  little  more  than  a  good  living  which 
this  immense  expansion  implies  should  suffice 
of  themselves  to  account  for  that  increase  of 
population  which  is  even  now  offering  a  new 
problem  to  the  Japanese  government,  and 
which  has  been  only  temporarily  met  by  the 
acquisition  of  Formosa  and  the  Pescadores, 
by  the  project  for  a  Japanese  Mexican  col 
ony,  by  the  shipment  of  laborers  to  Hawaii 
and  to  other  places,  and  by  the  overflow  into 
Australia,  where  the  Japanese  labor  question 
threatens  to  become  as  unpleasant  as  was  the 
Chinese  question  in  Dr.  Pearson's  time.  The 
whole  meaning  of  this  increase  of  population 
will  best  appear  when  I  remind  the  reader 
that,  in  one  sense  of  the  term,  the  Japanese 
are  by  no  means  a  fertile  race.  Large  fami 
lies  are  comparatively  rare, — a  family  of  nine 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WORLD     145 

or  ten  children  being  quite  uncommon,  and 
the  birth  of  twins  so  rare  as  to  be  considered 
an  anomaly.  Nevertheless,  the  Japanese  pop 
ulation  has  increased  over  25  per  cent,  while 
that  of  England  has  increased  only  about  7 
per  cent.  This,  of  course,  is  temporary,  and  a 
check  must  eventually  come ;  but  the  period  of 
that  check  is  apparently  still  far  off 

Imagine,  then,  the  consequence  of  a  corre 
sponding  commercial  and  industrial  develop-* 
ment  upon  a  Chinese  population  of  four  or 
five  hundred  millions, — probably  more  fertile 
than  the  Japanese,  declared  by  the  Japanese 
themselves  superior  in  all  the  craft  of  com 
merce  and  the  secrets  of  finance,  matchless  as 
mere  mechanical  workers,  and  capable  of  liv 
ing  and  multiplying  under  conditions  accord 
ing  to  which  the  Japanese  artisan  would  re 
fuse  to  live !  Compel  China  to  do  what  Japan 
has  voluntarily  done,  and  the  increase  of  her 
population  within  one  century  will  probably 
be  a  phenomenon  without  parallel  in  the  past 
history  of  the  world. 


146  KARMA 


VII 

Here,  however,  there  come  up  some  doubts 
to  be  considered.  Can  China  be  forced  to  de 
velop  herself  as  Japan  has  done?  And  is  not 
Western  industrialism  likely  to  be  protected 
from  Chinese  competition  by  the  irreducible 
character  of  Chinese  conservatism?  Japanese 
development  has  been  voluntary,  patriotic, 
eager,  earnest,  unselfish.  But  will  not  the 
Chinaman  of  the  year  2000  resemble  in  all 
things  the  familiar  Chinaman  of  to-day? 

I  must  presume  to  express  a  conviction  that 
the  character  of  Chinese  conservatism  has 
never  been  fully  understood  in  the  West,  and 
that  it  is  just  in  the  peculiar  one-sidedness  of 
that  conservatism  that  the  peril  reveals  itself. 
Japan  has  certainly  been  more  thoroughly 
studied  than  China;  yet  even  the  character  of 
Japan  was  so  little  understood  two  years  ago 
that  her  defeat  by  China,  was  predicted  as  a 
matter  of  course.  Japan  was  imagined  to  be  a 
sort  of  miniature  of  China, — probably  because 
of  superficial  resemblances  created  by  her 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WORLD     147 

adoption  of  Chinese  civilization.  It  often  oc 
curs  to  me  that  the  old  Jesuit  missionaries  un 
derstood  the  difference  of  the  races  infinitely 
better  than  even  our  diplomats  do  to-day. 
When,  after  having  studied  the  wonderful, 
quaint  letters  of  these  ecclesiastics,  one  reads 
the  judgments  uttered  about  the  Far  East  by 
modern  journalists,  and  the  absurdly  untruth 
ful  reports  sent  home  by  our  English  and 
American  missionaries,  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  we  have  not  actually  retrograded,  either 
in  common  honesty  or  in  knowledge  of  the 
Orient.  I  tried  to  make  plain  in  a  former  pa 
per  *  that  a  characteristic  of  Japanese  life  was 
its  fluidity;  and  also  that  this  characteristic 
was  not  of  yesterday.  All  the  modern  tales 
about  the  former  rigidity  of  Japanese  society 
—about  the  conservation  of  habits  and  cus 
toms  unchanged  through  centuries — are 
mostly  pure  fiction.  The  assimilative  genius 
of  the  race  is  the  proof.  Assimilative  genius  is 
not  the  characteristic  of  a  people  whose  cus 
toms  and  habits  have  been  conservatively  fixed 

*See  The  Atlantic  Monthly  for  October,  1895. 


148  KARMA 


beyond  the  reach  of  change.  "A  mind  that 
would  grow,"  said  Clifford,  "must  let  no  ideas 
become  permanent  except  such  as  lead  to  ac 
tion.  Towards  all  others  it  must  maintain  an 
attitude  of  absolute  receptivity, — admitting 
all,  being  modified  by  all,  but  permanently 
biased  by  none.  To  become  crystallized,  fixed, 
in  opinion  and  mode  of  thought  is  to  lose  that 
great  characteristic  of  life  by  which  it  is  dis 
tinguished  from  inanimate  nature, — the 
power  of  adapting  itself  to  circumstances. 
This  is  true  even  of  the  race.  .  .  .  And  if  we 
consider  that  a  race,  in  proportion  as  it  is 
plastic  and  capable  of  change,  may  be  consid 
ered  as  young  and  vigorous,  ...  we  shall  see 
the  immense  importance  of  checking  the 
growth  of  conventionalities."  *  The  relation 
between  the  essentially  mobile  and  plastic 
character  of  Japanese  society  and  that  assimi 
lative  genius  which  could  successively  adopt 
and  remodel  for  its  own  peculiar  needs  two  ut 
terly  different  forms  of  civilization  should  cer 
tainly  be  obvious.  But  according  to  the  same 

*  Lectures  <md  Essays,  "Some  Conditions  of  Mental  Devel 
opment." 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN   WORLD    149 

sociological  law  expressed  by  Professor  Clif 
ford,  the  Chinese  race  would  be  doomed  to 
disappear,  or  at  least  to  shrink  up  into  some 
narrow  area — supposing  it  really  incapable 
of  modification.  In  Europe  the  generally  re 
ceived  opinion  about  China  seems  to  be  that 
her  conservatism  is  like  the  conservatism  of 
the  ancient  Egyptians,  and  must  eventually 
leave  her  people  in  a  state  of  changeless  sub 
servience  like  that  of  the  modern  fellaheen. 
But  is  this  opinion  true? 

Perhaps  we  should  look  in  vain  through  the 
literature  of  any  other  equally  civilized  people 
for  a  record  like  that  in  the  Li-Ki,  which  tells 
us  that  anciently,  in  China,  persons  "guilty  of 
changing  what  had  been  definitely  settled,"  and 
of  using  or  making  "strange  garments,  won 
derful  contrivances,  and  extraordinary  imple 
ments,"  were  put  to  death !  But  modern  China 
is  not  to  be  judged  by  her  ancient  literature, 
but  by  her  present  life.  Men  who  know  China 
also  know  that  Chinese  conservatism  does  not 
extend  to  those  activities  which  belong  to  trade, 
to  industry,  to  commerce  or  speculation.  It 


150  KARMA 

is  a  conservatism  in  beliefs,  ethics,  and  customs, 
and  has  nothing  to  do  with  business.  A  con 
servatism  of  this  sort  may  be  a  source  of  power ; 
it  is  not  likely  to  be  a  source  of  weakness. 
Whether  in  Japan  or  in  India,  Canada  or  Aus 
tralia,  Cuba  or  Chili,  Siberia  or  Burmah,  the 
Chinaman  remains  a  Chinaman.  But  while  so 
remaining  he  knows  how  to  utilize  the  modern 
inventions  of  industry,  the  modern  facilities  of 
communication,  the  new  resources  of  com 
merce.  He  knows  the  value  of  cable  codes; 
he  charters  steamers,  builds  factories,  manages 
banks,  profits  by  the  depreciation  or  the  rise 
of  exchange,  makes  "corners,"  organizes  stock 
companies,  hires  steam  or  electricity  to  aid  him 
in  his  manufacturing  or  speculating.*  As  a 
merchant  his  commercial  integrity  is  recognized 
by  the  foreign  merchants,  of  every  nation,  who 
deal  with  him.  He  keeps  his  costume  and  his 
creed,  observes  his  national  rules  of  propriety, 

*  At  the  time  of  the  great  silver  depreciation  a  clever  trick 
was  reported  from  one  of  the  Chinese  open  ports.  Some  Chi 
nese  forgers  were  able  to  put  into  circulation  a  considerable 
quantity  of  unlawful  coin;  but  when  the  coin  was  examined 
it  proved  to  be  true  metal!  Nevertheless,  a  handsome  profit 
must  have  been  made,  because  of  the  temporary  difference 
between  the  market  price  of  silver  and  the  value  of  the  money. 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     151 

maintains  his  peculiar  cult  at  home;  but  the 
home  may  be  a  granite  front  in  America,  a 
bungalow  in  India,  a  bamboo  hut  in  Sumatra, 
a  brick  cottage  in  New  Zealand,  a  fireproof 
two-story  in  Japan.  He  avails  himself  of  the 
best  he  can  afford  abroad  when  the  use  of  the 
best  is  connected  with  a  commercial  advan 
tage  ;  and  when  this  is  not  the  case  he  can  put 
up  with  much  worse  than  the  worst.  His  con 
servatism  never  interferes  with  his  business: 
it  is  a  domestic  matter,  a  personal  matter,  af 
fecting  only  his  intimate  life,  his  private  expen 
diture.  His  pleasures  and  even  his  vices — pro 
vided  he  be  not  a  gambler — are  comparatively 
inexpensive;  and  he  clings  to  the  simplicity  of 
his  ancestral  habits  even  while  controlling — 
like  the  Chinese  merchant  at  the  next  corner 
of  the  street  in  which  I  live — a  capital  of  hun 
dreds  of  thousands.  This  is  his  strength;  and 
in  our  own  West,  through  centuries,  it  has 
been  the  strength  of  the  Jews. 

Perhaps  China  can  never  be  made  to  do  all 
that  Japan  has  done;  but  she  will  certainly  be 
made  to  do  what  has  given  Japan  her  industrial 


152  KARMA 


and  commercial  importance.  She  is  hemmed  in 
by  a  steadily  closing  ring  of  foreign  enemies: 
Russia  north  and  west,  France  and  England 
south,  and  all  the  sea  power  of  the  world  threat 
ening  her  coast.  That  she  will  be  dominated  is 
practically  certain;  the  doubt  is,  how  and  by 
whom.  Russia  cannot  be  trusted  with  the  con 
trol  of  those  hundreds  of  millions ;  and  a  parti 
tion  of  Chinese  territory  would  present  many 
difficult  problems.  Very  possibly  she  will  be 
long  allowed  to  retain  her  independence  in 
name,  after  having  lost  it  in  fact.  She  will 
not  be  permitted  to  exclude  foreigners  from 
her  interior  during  any  great  length  of  time. 
If  she  will  not  build  railroads  and  establish 
telegraph  lines,  the  work  will  be  done  by  for 
eign  capital,  and  she  will  have  to  pay  for  it  in 
the  end.  She  will  be  exploited  as  much  as 
possible;  and,  for  the  sake  of  the  exploiters, 
foreign  military  power  will  force  order,  sani 
tary  law  compel  cleanliness,  engineering  pro 
vide  against  catastrophes.  She  cannot  be 
compelled  to  change  her  creeds  or  to  study 
Western  science  in  all  her  schools ;  but  she  will 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     153 

have  to  work  very  hard,  and  to  keep  her  cities 
free  from  plague.  By  remaining  otherwise 
unchanged,  she  will  become,  not  less  danger 
ous,  but  more  dangerous. 

From  the  most  ancient  times  Chinese  multi 
plication  has  been  checked  at  intervals  by  ca 
lamities  of  such  magnitude  that,  to  find  any 
parallel  for  them  in  Western  history,  we  must 
recall  the  slaughters  of  the  Crusaders  and  the 
ravages  of  the  Black  Death.  Enormous  fam 
ines,  enormous  inundations,  frightful  revolu 
tions  provoked  by  misery,  have  periodically 
thinned  the  number  of  China's  millions.  Even 
in  our  own  era  there  have  been  disasters  too 
large  for  the  imagination  to  realize  without 
difficulty.  The  Tai-ping  rebellion  cost  twenty 
millions  of  lives,  the  later  Mohammedan  re 
volt  in  the  West  more  than  two  million  five 
hundred  thousand;  and  comparatively  recent 
famines  and  floods  have  also  swept  millions  out 
of  existence.  But  whatever  Western  power 
rule  China  hereafter,  that  power  will  have  to 
oppose  and  to  overcome,  for  reasons  of  self- 
interest,  all  those  natural  or  unnatural  checks 


154  KARMA 


upon  multiplication  which  have  hitherto  kept 
the  population  at  a  relatively  constant  figure. 
The  cholera  and  the  plague  must  be  conquered, 
the  inundations  must  be  prevented,  the  fam 
ines  must  be  provided  against,  and  infan 
ticide  must  be  prohibited. 

As  for  the  new  political  situation  in  the 
East,  the  guarantee  of  the  Chinese  indemnity 
to  Japan  by  Russia,  the  rumors  of  a  European 
combination  to  offset  Russia's  financial  diplo 
macy,  the  possibilities  of  an  Anglo-Japanese 
alliance,  the  supposed  project  for  a  Russian 
railway  through  Manchuria,  the  story  of  a  se 
cret  Russo-Chinese  compact,  the  state  of  an 
archy  in  Korea  following  upon  the  brutal  mur 
der  of  the  queen,  the  tangle  of  interests  and 
the  confusion  of  perils, — all  this  I  confess  my 
self  utterly  unable  to  express  any  opinion 
about.  At  this  writing  nothing  appears  clear 
except  that  China  will  be  controlled,  and  that 
Japan  has  become  a  new  and  important  factor 
in  all  international  adjustments  or  readjust 
ments  of  the  balance  of  power  in  the  Pacific. 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     155 


VIII 

No  successful  attempt  has  yet  been  made, 
by  any  one  familiar  with  the  Far  East,  to 
controvert  the  views  of  Dr.  Pearson.  Not 
one  of  the  many  antagonistic  reviews  of  his 
work  has  even  yielded  proof  of  knowledge 
competent  to  deal  with  his  facts.  Profes 
sor  Huxley  indeed  suggested — in  a  short  ap 
preciative  note  appended  to  his  essay,  Meth 
ods  and  Results  of  Ethnology* — that  future 
therapeutic  science  might  find  ways  to  render 
the  tropics  less  uninhabitable  for  white  races 
than  Dr.  Pearson  believed.  But  this  sugges 
tion  does  not  touch  the  question  of  obstacles, 
more  serious  than  fever,  which  a  tropical  cli 
mate  offers  to  intellectual  development,  nor 
the  question  of  race  competition  in  temperate 
climates,  nor  any  of  the  important  social  prob 
lems  to  which  Dr.  Pearson  called  attention. 
Religious  criticisms  of  the  book  have  been  nu 
merous  and  hostile;  but  they  have  contained 
nothing  more  noteworthy  than  the  assertion 

*  Collected  Essays,  1894. 


156  KARMA 


that  Dr.  Pearson's  opinions  were  due  to  his 
want  of  faith  in  Providence.  Such  a  state 
ment  amounts  only  to  the  alarming  admission 
that  we  should  hope  for  some  miracle  to  save 
us  from  extermination.  Various  journalists 
on  this  side  of  the  world  have  ventured  the 
supposition  that  a  Western  domination  of 
China  might  gradually  force  up  the  standard 
of  Chinese  living  to  such  a  degree  as  would 
leave  Oriental  competition  no  more  to  be 
dreaded  than  international  competition  at 
home;  and  they  have  cited  the  steady  increase 
of  the  cost  of  life  in  Japan  as  a  proof  of  the 
possibility.  But  even  could  it  be  shown  that 
the  cost  of  living  in  Japan  is  likely,  say  at  the 
close  of  the  twentieth  century,  to  equal  the 
average  cost  of  life  in  Europe,  it  were  still 
poor  reasoning  to  argue  that  the  influence 
of  Occidental  civilization  must  necessarily  pro 
duce  similar  results  in  China,  under  absolutely 
different  conditions  and  among  a  people  of 
totally  opposite  character.  What  distinguishes 
the  Chinese  race  from  every  other  civilized  race 
is  their  inherent  power  to  resist,  under  all  im- 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     157 

aginable  circumstances,  every  influence  calcu 
lated  to  raise  their  standard  of  living.  The 
men  who  best  know  China  are  just  the  men 
who  cannot  conceive  the  possibility  of  raising 
the  standard  of  Chinese  living  to  the  Western 
level.  Eventually,  under  foreign  domination, 
the  social  conditions  would  certainly  be  modi 
fied,  but  never  so  modified  as  to  render  Chi 
nese  competition  less  dangerous,  because  the 
standard  of  living  would  not  be  very  materi 
ally  affected  by  any  social  reforms.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  con 
ditions  at  home  which  would  rapidly  force 
down  the  living-standard,  and  manifest  them 
selves  later  in  a  shrinkage  of  population.  That 
the  future  industrial  competition  between  Oc 
cident  and  Orient  must  be  largely  decided  by 
physiological  economy  is  not  to  be  doubted, 
and  the  period  of  the  greatest  possible  amount 
of  human  suffering  is  visibly  approaching. 
The  great  cause  of  human  suffering,  and  there 
fore  of  all  progress  in  civilization,  has  been 
pressure  of  population;  but  the  worst,  as  Her 
bert  Spencer  long  since  pointed  out,  has  yet 


158  KARMA 


to  come:  "Though  by  the  emigration  that  takes 
place  when  the  pressure  arrives  at  a  certain 
intensity  temporary  relief  is  from  time  to  time 
obtained,  yet  as  by  this  process  all  habitable 
countries  must  become  peopled,  it  follows  that 
in  the  end  the  pressure,  whatever  it  may  then 
be,  must  be  borne  in  full."  *  In  such  an  epoch 
the  races  of  the  Occident  can  only  maintain 
their  standard  of  living  by  forcing  other  races 
out  of  existence ;  and  in  the  mere  ability  to  live 
they  will  probably  find  themselves  over 
matched. 

What  Chinese  competition  would  then  mean 
cannot  be  imagined  without  a  clear  under 
standing  of  one  ugly  fact  which  distinguishes 
modern  civilization  in  the  West  from  ancient 
civilization  in  the  Far  East, — its  monstrous 
egotism.  As  Professor  Huxley  has  shown,  the 
so-called  "struggle  for  existence"  in  Western 
society  is  not  really  a  struggle  to  live,  but  a 
struggle  to  enjoy,  and  therefore  something  far 
more  cruel  than  a  contest  for  the  right  to  ex- 

*  Principles  of  Biology,  "Human  Population  in  the  Future," 
vol.  ii.  chap.  xiii. 


CHINA   AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     159 

ist.*  According  to  Far-Eastern  philosophy, 
any  society  founded  upon  such  a  system  of 
selfish  and  sensual  intercompetition  is  doomed 
to  perish;  and  Far-Eastern  philosophy  may 
be  right.  At  all  events,  the  struggle  to  come 
will  be  one  between  luxurious  races,  accus 
tomed  to  regard  pleasure,  at  any  cost,  as  the 
object  of  existence,  and  a  people  of  hundreds 
of  millions  disciplined  for  thousands  of  years 
to  the  most  untiring  industry  and  the  most 
self-denying  thrift,  under  conditions  which 
would  mean  worse  than  death  for  our  working 
masses, — a  people,  in  short,  quite  content  to 
strive  to  the  uttermost  in  exchange  for  the  sim 
ple  privilege  of  life. 

Pessimistic  as  Dr.  Pearson's  views  seemed  to 
most  readers  at  the  time  when  his  book  was 
first  published,  they  now  command  more  at 
tention  than  was  accorded  to  them  before  the 
late  war  between  China  and  Japan.  They  are 
forcing  new  convictions  and  new  apprehen 
sions.  It  is  certain  that  the  conditions  of  so- 

*  Evolution  of  Ethics,  Prolegomena,  xiv. 


160  KARMA 


ciety  in  Western  countries  are  not  now  amelio 
rating;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  believe  that  the 
decay  of  faith,  the  substitution  of  convention 
alism  for  true  religion,  the  ever-growing  hun 
ger  of  pleasure,  the  constant  aggravation  of 
suffering,  may  be  signs  of  that  senescence 
which  precedes  the  death  of  a  civilization.  It 
is  possible  that  the  races  of  the  Occident  have 
almost  exhausted  their  capacity  for  further  de 
velopment,  and  even  that,  as  distinct  races, 
they  are  doomed  to  disappear.  Nor  is  it  un 
natural  to  suppose  that  the  future  will  belong 
to  the  races  of  the  Far  East. 

But  a  more  optimistic  view  of  the  future 
is  also  possible.  Though  there  be  signs  in 
Western  civilization  of  the  disintegration  of 
existing  social  structures,  there  are  signs  also 
of  new  latent  forces  that  will  recreate  society 
upon  another  and  a  more  normal  plan.  There 
are  unmistakable  growing  tendencies  to  inter 
national  union,  to  the  most  complete  industrial 
and  commercial  federation.  International  ne 
cessities  are  rapidly  breaking  down  old  preju 
dices  and  conservatisms,  while  developing  cos- 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD      161 

mopolite  feeling.  The  great  fraternities  of  sci 
ence  and  of  art  have  declared  themselves  in 
dependent  of  country  or  class  or  creed,  and 
recognize  only  the  aristocracy  of  intellect.  Few 
thinkers  would  now  smile  at  the  prediction 
that  international  war  will  be  made  impos 
sible,  or  doubt  the  coming  realization  of  Victor 
Hugo's  dream  of  the  "United  States  of  Eu 
rope."  And  this  would  signify  nothing  less 
than  the  final  obliteration  of  national  frontiers, 
the  removal  of  all  barriers  between  European 
peoples,  the  ultimate  fusion  of  Western  races 
into  one  vast  social  organism.  Such  fusion  is 
even  now  visibly  beginning.  The  tendency  of 
Western  civilization  in  its  present  form  is  to 
unite  the  strong  while  crushing  the  weak,  and 
individual  superiority  seeks  its  affiliations  irre 
spective  of  nationality. 

But  the  promise  of  international  coalescence 
in  the  West  suggests  the  probability  of  far 
larger  tendencies  to  unification  in  the  remoter 
future, — to  unification  not  of  nations  only,  but 
of  widely  divergent  races.  The  evolutional 
trend  would  seem  to  be  toward  universal 


162  KARMA 


brotherhood,  without  distinctions  of  country, 
creed,  or  blood.  It  is  neither  unscientific  nor 
unreasonable  to  suppose  the  world  eventually 
peopled  by  a  race  different  from  any  now  ex 
isting,  yet  created  by  the  blending  of  the  best 
types  of  all  races ;  uniting  Western  energy  with 
Far-Eastern  patience,  northern  vigor  with 
southern  sensibility,  the  highest  ethical  feelings 
developed  by  all  great  religions  with  the  larg 
est  mental  faculties  evolved  by  all  civilizations ; 
speaking  a  single  tongue  composed  from  the 
richest  and  strongest  elements  of  all  preexist 
ing  human  speech;  and  forming  a  society  un 
imaginably  unlike,  yet  also  unimaginably 
superior  to,  anything  which  now  is  or  has  ever 
been. 

To  many  the  mere  thought  of  a  fusion  of 
races  will  be  repellent,  because  of  ancient  and 
powerful  prejudices  once  essential  to  national 
self-preservation.  But  as  a  matter  of  scien 
tific  fact  we  know  that  none  of  the  present 
higher  races  is  really  a  pure  race,  but  repre 
sents  the  blending,  in  prehistoric  times,  of 
races  that  have  individually  disappeared  from 


CHINA  AND   THE   WESTERN    WORLD     163 

the  earth.  All  our  prejudices  of  nationality 
and  race  and  creed  have  doubtless  had  their 
usefulness,  and  some  will  probably  continue  to 
have  usefulness  for  ages  to  be ;  but  the  way  to 
the  highest  progress  can  be  reached  only 
through  the  final  extinction  of  all  prejudice, — 
through  the  annihilation  of  every  form  of  self 
ishness,  whether  individual  or  national  or  ra 
cial,  that  opposes  itself  to  the  evolution  of  the 
feeling  of  universal  brotherhood.  The  great 
Harvey  said,  "Our  progress  is  from  self-inter 
est  to  self-annihilation;"  Modern  thought  in 
dorses  the  truth  of  that  utterance.  But  the 
truth  itself  is  older  by  thousands  of  years  than 
Harvey;  for  it  was  spoken,  long  before  the 
age  of  Christ,  by  the  lips  of  the  Buddha. 


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g  J3UE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 

BECCIR  JUL  1?  198' 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m,  1  783          BERKELEY,  CA  94720 

(PK 


